Free The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope

reason, because it is so, that we may at last recur to them without danger. If we regret nothing, — if neither of us has anything to regret, why not recur to them, and talk of them freely?”
    “No, George; that would not do.”
    “By heavens, no! It would drive me mad; and if I know aught of you, it would hardly leave you as calm as you are at present.”
    “As I would wish to be left calm — “
    “Would you? Then I suppose I ought to hold my tongue. But, Alice, I shall never have the power of speaking to you again as I speak now. Since we have been out together, we have been dear friends; is it not so?”
    “And shall we not always be dear friends?”
    “No, certainly not. How will it be possible? Think of it. How can I really be your friend when you are the mistress of that man’s house in Cambridgeshire?”
    “George!”
    “I mean nothing disrespectful. I truly beg your pardon if it has seemed so. Let me say that gentleman’s house; — for he is a gentleman.”
    “That he certainly is.”
    “You could not have accepted him were he not so. But how can I be your friend when you are his wife? I may still call you cousin Alice, and pat your children on the head if I chance to see them; and shall stop in the streets and shake hands with him if I meet him; — that is if my untoward fate does not induce him to cut my acquaintance; — but as for friendship, that will be over when you and I shall have parted next Thursday evening at London Bridge.”
    “Oh, George, don’t say so!”
    “But I do.”
    “And why on Thursday? Do you mean that you won’t come to Queen Anne Street any more?”
    “Yes, that is what I do mean. This trip of ours has been very successful, Kate says. Perhaps Kate knows nothing about it.”
    “It has been very pleasant, — at least to me.”
    “And the pleasure has had no drawback?”
    “None to me.”
    “It has been very pleasant to me, also; — but the pleasure has had its alloy. Alice, I have nothing to ask from you, — nothing.”
    “Anything that you should ask, I would do for you.”
    “I have nothing to ask; — nothing. But I have one word to say.”
    “George, do not say it. Let me go up-stairs. Let me go to Kate.”
    “Certainly; if you wish it you shall go.” He still held his foot against the chair which barred her passage, and did not attempt to rise as he must have done to make way for her passage out. “Certainly you shall go to Kate, if you refuse to hear me. But after all that has passed between us, after these six weeks of intimate companionship, I think you ought to listen to me. I tell you that I have nothing to ask. I am not going to make love to you.”
    Alice had commenced some attempt to rise, but she had again settled herself in her chair. And now, when he paused for a moment, she made no further sign that she wished to escape, nor did she say a word to intimate her further wish that he should be silent.
    “I am not going to make love to you,” he said again. “As for making love, as the word goes, that must be over between you and me. It has been made and marred, and cannot be remade. It may exist, or it may have been expelled; but where it does not exist, it will never be brought back again.”
    “It should not be spoken of between you and me.”
    “So, no doubt, any proper-going duenna would say, and so, too, little children should be told; but between you and me there can be no necessity for falsehood. We have grown beyond our sugar-toothed ages, and are now men and women. I perfectly understood your breaking away from me. I understood you, and in spite of my sorrow knew that you were right. I am not going to accuse or to defend myself; but I knew that you were right.”
    “Then let there be no more about it.”
    “Yes; there must be more about it. I did not understand you when you accepted Mr Grey. Against him I have not a whisper to make. He may be perfect for aught I know. But, knowing you as I thought I did, I could not understand