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THE REEF
penny it cost. My mistake was in being ashamed, just at fi rst, of
its having cost such a lot. I tried to carry it off as a joke – to
talk of it to myself as an ‘adventure’. I’d always wanted adventures, and you’d given me one, and I tried to take your attitude
about it, to ‘play the game’ and convince myself that I hadn’t
risked any more on it than you. Then, when I met you again,
I suddenly saw that I HAD risked more, but that I’d won more,
too – such worlds! I’d been trying all the while to put everything
I could between us; now I want to sweep everything away. I’d
been trying to forget how you looked; now I want to remember
you always. I’d been trying not to hear your voice; now I never
want to hear any other. I’ve made my choice – that’s all: I’ve
had you and I mean to keep you.” Her face was shining like her
eyes. “To keep you hidden away here,” she ended, and put her
hand upon her breast.
After she had left him, Darrow continued to sit motionless, staring back into their past. Hitherto it had lingered on
the edge of his mind in a vague pink blur, like one of the little
rose-leaf clouds that a setting sun drops from its disk. Now it
was a huge looming darkness, through which his eyes vainly strained. The whole episode was still obscure to him, save
where here and there, as they talked, some phrase or gesture
or intonation of the girl’s had lit up a little spot in the night.
She had said: “I wonder what your feeling for me was?” and
he found himself wondering too . . . He remembered distinctly
enough that he had not meant the perilous passion – even in
its most transient form – to play a part in their relation. In that
respect his attitude had been above reproach. She was an unusually original and attractive creature, to whom he had want-
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EDITH WHARTON
ed to give a few days of harmless pleasuring, and who was alert
and expert enough to understand his intention and spare him
the boredom of hesitations and misinterpretations. That had
been his fi rst impression, and her subsequent demeanour had
justifi ed it. She had been, from the outset, just the frank and
easy comrade he had expected to fi nd her. Was it he, then,
who, in the sequel, had grown impatient of the bounds he
had set himself? Was it his wounded vanity that, seeking balm
for its hurt, yearned to dip deeper into the healing pool of
her compassion? In his confused memory of the situation he
seemed not to have been guiltless of such yearnings . . . Yet for
the fi rst few days the experiment had been perfectly successful. Her enjoyment had been unclouded and his pleasure in it
undisturbed. It was very gradually – he seemed to see – that
a shade of lassitude had crept over their intercourse. Perhaps
it was because, when her light chatter about people failed, he
found she had no other fund to draw on, or perhaps simply because of the sweetness of her laugh, or of the charm of the gesture with which, one day in the woods of Marly, she had tossed
off her hat and tilted back her head at the call of a cuckoo; or
because, whenever he looked at her unexpectedly, he found
that she was looking at him and did not want him to know
it; or perhaps, in varying degrees, because of all these things,
that there had come a moment when no word seemed to fl y
high enough or dive deep enough to utter the sense of wellbeing each gave to the other, and the natural substitute for
speech had been a kiss.
The kiss, at all events, had come at the precise moment to
save their venture from disaster. They had reached the point
272
THE REEF
when her amazing reminiscences had begun to fl ag, when her
future had been exhaustively discussed, her theatrical prospects minutely studied, her quarrel with Mrs. Murrett retold
with the last amplifi cation of detail, and when, perhaps conscious of her exhausted resources and his dwindling interest,
she had committed the fatal error of saying that she could see
he was unhappy, and entreating him to tell her why . . .
From the brink of estranging confi dences, and from
the risk of unfavourable comparisons, his gesture had snatched
her back to safety; and as soon as he had kissed her he felt that
she would never bore him again. She was one of the elemental
creatures whose emotion is all in their pulses, and who become inexpressive or sentimental when they try to turn sensation into speech. His caress had restored her to her natural
place in the scheme of things, and Darrow felt as if he had
clasped a tree and a nymph had bloomed from it . . .
The mere fact of not having to listen to her any longer added immensely to her charm. She continued, of course, to talk to
him, but it didn’t matter, because he no longer made any effort to follow her words, but let her voice run on as a musical
undercurrent to his thoughts.
She hadn’t a drop of poetry in her, but she had some of
the qualities that create it in others; and in moments of heat
the imagination does not always feel the difference . . .
Lying beside her in the shade, Darrow felt her presence as
a part of the charmed stillness of the summer woods, as the element of vague well-being that suffused his senses and lulled to
sleep the ache of wounded pride. All he asked of her, as yet,
was a touch on the hand or on the lips – and that she should
273
EDITH WHARTON
let him go on lying there through the long warm hours, while
a black-bird’s song throbbed like a fountain, and the summer
wind stirred in the trees, and close by, between the nearest
branches and the brim of his tilted hat, a slight white fi gure
gathered up all the fl oating threads of joy . . .
He recalled, too, having noticed, as he lay staring at
a break in the tree-tops, a stream of mares’-tails coming up
the sky. He had said to himself: “It will rain to-morrow,”
and the thought had made the air seem warmer and the sun
more vivid on her hair . . . Perhaps if the mares’-tails had not
come up the sky their adventure might have had no sequel. But
the cloud brought rain, and next morning he looked out of his
window into a cold grey blur. They had planned an all-day excursion down the Seine, to the two Andelys and Rouen, and
now, with the long hours on their hands, they were both a little at a loss . . . There was the Louvre, of course, and the Luxembourg; but he had tried looking at pictures with her, she
had fi rst so persistently admired the worst things, and then
so frankly lapsed into indifference, that he had no wish to
repeat the experiment. So they went out, aimlessly, and took
a cold wet walk, turning at length into the deserted arcades of
the Palais Royal, and fi nally drifting into one of its equally deserted restaurants, where they lunched alone and somewhat
dolefully, served by a wan old waiter with the look of a castaway who has given up watching for a sail . . . It was odd how
the waiter’s face came back to him . . .
Perhaps but for the rain it might never have happened; but
what was the use of thinking of that now? He tried to turn
his thoughts to more urgent issues; but, by a strange perver-
274
THE REEF
sity of association, every detail of the day was forcing itself on
his mind with an insistence from which there was no escape.
Reluctantly he relived the long wet walk back to the hotel, after a tedious hour at a cinematograph show on the Boulevard.
It was still raining when they withdrew from this stale spectacle, but she had obstinately refused to take a cab, had even, on
the way, insisted on loitering under the dripping awnings of
shop-windows and poking into draughty passages, and fi nally,
when they had nearly reached their destination, had gone so
far as to suggest that they should turn back to hunt up some
show she had heard of in a theatre at the Batignolles. But at
that he had somewhat irritably protested: he remembered that,
for the fi rst time, they were both rather irritable, and vaguely
disposed to resist one another’s suggestions. His feet were wet,
and he was tired of walking, and sick of the smell of stuffy unaired theatres, and he had said he must really get back to write
some letters – and so they had kept on to the hotel . . .
CHAPTER XXVII
Darrow had no idea how long he had sat there when he
heard Anna’s hand on the door. The effort of rising, and of composing his face to meet her, gave him a factitious sense of selfcontrol. He said to himself: “I must decide on something — ”
and that lifted him a hair’s breadth above the whirling waters.
She came in with a lighter step, and he instantly perceived
that something unforeseen and reassuring had happened.
“She’s been with me. She came and found me on the terrace. We’ve had a long talk and she’s explained everything.
I feel as if I’d never known her before!”
Her voice was so moved and tender that it checked his
start of apprehension.
“She’s explained — ?”
“It’s natural, isn’t it, that she should have felt a little sore at
the kind of inspection she’s been subjected to? Oh, not from
you – I don’t mean that! But Madame de Chantelle’s opposition – and her sending for Adelaide Painter! She told me
frankly she didn’t care to owe her husband to Adelaide Painter . . . She thinks now that her annoyance at feeling herself
so talked over and scrutinized may have shown itself in her
manner to Owen, and set him imagining the insane things he
did . . . I understand all she must have felt, and I agree with her
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THE REEF
that it’s best she should go away for a while. She’s made me,”
Anna summed up, “feel as if I’d been dreadfully thick-skinned
and obtuse!”
“YOU?”
“Yes. As if I’d treated her like the bric-a-brac that used to
be sent down here ‘on approval,’ to see if it would look well
with the other pieces.” She added, with a sudden fl ush of
enthusiasm: “I’m glad she’s got it in her to make one feel
like that!”
She seemed to wait for Darrow to agree with her, or to put
some other question, and he fi nally found voice to ask: “Then
you think it’s not a fi nal break?”
“I hope not – I’ve never hoped it more! I had a word with
Owen, too, after I left her, and I think he understands that
he must let her go without insisting on any positive promise.
She’s excited . . . he must let her calm down . . . ”
Again she waited, and Darrow said: “Surely you can make
him see that.”
“She’ll help me to – she’s to see him, of course, before she
goes. She starts immediately, by the way, with Adelaide Painter, who is motoring over to Francheuil to catch the one o’clock
express – and who, of course, knows nothing of all this, and is
simply to be told that Sophy has been sent for by the Farlows.”
Darrow mutely signed his comprehension, and she went
on: “Owen is particularly anxious that neither Adelaide nor
his grandmother should have the least inkling of what’s happened. The need of shielding Sophy will help him to control
himself. He’s coming to his senses, poor boy; he’s ashamed of
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EDITH WHARTON
his wild talk already. He asked me to tell you so; no doubt he’ll
tell you so himself.”
Darrow made a movement of protest. “Oh, as to that –
the thing’s not worth another word.”
“Or another thought, either?” She brightened. “Promise
me you won’t even think of it – promise me you won’t be
hard on him!”
He was fi nding it easier to smile back at her. “Why should
you think it necessary to ask my indulgence for Owen?”
She hesitated a moment, her eyes wandering from him.
Then they came back with a smile. “Perhaps because I need it
for myself.”
“For yourself?”
“I mean, because I understand better how one can torture
one’s self over unrealities.”
As Darrow listened, the tension of his nerves began to relax. Her gaze, so grave and yet so sweet, was like a deep pool
into which he could plunge and hide himself from the hard
glare of his misery. As this ecstatic sense enveloped him he
found it more and more diffi cult to follow her words and to
frame an answer; but what did anything matter, except that
her voice should go on, and the syllables fall like soft touches on his tortured brain?
“Don’t you know,” she continued, “the bliss of waking
from a bad dream in one’s own quiet room, and going slowly
over all the horror without being afraid of it any more? That’s
what I’m doing now. And that’s why I understand Owen . . . ”
She broke off, and he felt her touch on his arm. “BECAUSE I’D
DREAMED THE HORROR TOO!”
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THE REEF
He understood her then, and stammered: “You?”
“Forgive me! And let me tell you! . . . It will help you to understand Owen . . . There WERE little things . . . little signs . . .
once I had begun to watch for them: your reluctance to speak
about her . . . her reserve with you . . . a sort of constraint we’d
never seen in her before . . . ”
She laughed up at him, and with her hands in his he contrived to say: “NOW you understand why?”
“Oh, I understand; of course I understand; and I want
you to laugh at me – with me! Because there were other things
too . . . crazier things still . . . There was even – last night on
the terrace – her pink cloak . . . ”
“Her pink cloak?” Now he honestly wondered, and as she
saw it she blushed.
“You’ve forgotten about the cloak? The pink cloak that
Owen saw you with at the play in Paris? Yes . . . yes . . . I was
mad enough for that! . . . It does me good to laugh about it now!
But you ought to know that I’m going to be a jealous woman
. . . a ridiculously jealous woman . . . you ought to be warned of
it in time . . . ”
He had dropped her hands, and she leaned close and lifted
her arms to his neck with one of her rare gestures of surrender.
“I don’t know why it is; but it makes me happier now to
have been so foolish!”
Her lips were parted in a noiseless laugh and the tremor of
her lashes made their shadow move on her cheek. He looked at
her through a mist of pain and saw all her offered beauty
held up like a cup to his lips; but as he stooped to it a darkness
279
EDITH WHARTON
seemed to fall between them, her arms slipped from his shoulders and she drew away from him abruptly.
“But she WAS with you, then?” she exclaimed; and then,
as he stared at her: “Oh, don’t say no! Only go and look at
your eyes!”
He stood speechless, and she pressed on: “Don’t deny
it – oh, don’t deny it! What will be left for me to imagine
if you do? Don’t you see how every single thing cries it out?
Owen sees it – he saw it again just now! When I told him
she’d relented, and would see him, he said: ‘Is that Darrow’s
doing too?’”
Darrow took the onslaught in silence. He might have spoken, have summoned up the usual phrases of banter and denial; he was not even certain that they might not, for the moment, have served their purpose if he could have uttered
them without being seen. But he was as conscious of what had
happened to his face as if he had obeyed Anna’s bidding and
looked at himself in the glass. He knew he could no more hide
from her what was written there than he could efface from his
soul the fi ery record of what he had just lived through. There
before him, staring him in the eyes, and refl ecting itself in all
his lineaments, was the overwhelming fact of Sophy Viner’s
passion and of the act by which she had attested it.
Anna was talking again, hurriedly, feverishly, and his
soul was wrung by the anguish in her voice. “Do speak at
last – you must speak! I don’t want to ask you to harm the girl;
but you must see that your silence is doing her more harm
than your answering my questions could. You’re leaving me
only the worst things to think of her . . . she’d see that herself
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