Murder in Any Degree Part 20

Despite himself, his anger vanished at her quiet command.

"If I listen," he thought, "it's all over."

He still believed he was resisting, only he wanted to hear as he had never wanted anything else--to learn why she was not going to the other man.

"Yes, what has happened is only natural," she said, drawing her eyebrows a little together and seeming to reason more with herself. "It had to happen before I could really be sure of my love for you. You men know and choose from the knowledge of many women. A woman, such as I, coming to you as a girl, must often and often ask herself if she would still make the same choice. Then another man comes into her life and she makes of him a test to know once and for all the answer to her question. Jack, that was it. That was the instinct that drove me to try if I _could_ leave you--the instinct I did not understand then, but that I do now, when it's too late."

"Yes, she is clever," he thought to himself, listening to her, desiring her the more as he admired what he did not credit. He felt that he wanted to be convinced and with a last angry resistance, said:

"Very clever, indeed!"

She looked at him with her clear, gray look, a smile in her eyes, sadness on her lips.

"You know it is true."

He did not reply. Finally he said bruskly:

"And when did--did the change come to you?"

"In the carriage, when every turn of the wheel, every pa.s.sing street, was rus.h.i.+ng me away from you. I thought of you--alone--lost--and suddenly I knew. I beat with my fists on the window and called to the coachman like a madman. I don't know what I said. I came back."

She stopped, pressing back the tears that had started on her eyelids at the memory. She controlled herself, gave a quick little nod, without offering her hand, went toward the door.

"What! I've got to call her back!" He said it to himself, adding furiously: "Never!"

He let her go to the door itself, vowing he would not make the advance.

When the door was half open, something in him cried: "Wait!"

She closed the door softly, but she did not immediately turn round. The palms of her hands were wet with the cold, frightened sweat of that awful moment. When she returned, she came to him with a wondering, timid, girlish look in her eyes.

"Oh, Jack, if you only could!" she said, and then only did she put out her hands and let her fingers press over his heart.

The next moment she was swept up in his arms, shrinking and very still.

All at once he put her from him and said roughly:

"What was his name?"

"No, no!"

"Give me his name," he said miserably. "I must know it."

"No--neither now nor at any other time," she said firmly, and her look as it met his had again all the old domination. "That is my condition."

"Ah, how weak I have been," he said to himself, with a last bitter, instinctive revolt. "How weak I am."

She saw and understood.

"We must be generous," she said, changing her voice quickly to gentleness. "He has been pained enough already. He alone will suffer.

And if you knew his name it would only make you unhappy."

He still rebelled, but suddenly to him came a thought which at first he was ashamed to express.

"He doesn't know?"

She lied.

"No."

"He's still waiting--there?"

"Yes."

"Ah, he's waiting," he said to himself.

A gleam of vanity, of triumph over the discarded, humiliated one, leaped up fiercely within him and ended all the lingering, bitter memories.

"Then you care?" she said, resting her head on his shoulder that he might not see she had read such a thought.

"Care?" he cried. He had surrendered. Now it was necessary to be convinced. "Why, when I received your letter I--I was wild. I wanted to do murder."

"Jackie!"

"I was like a madman--everything was gone--nothing was left."

"Oh, Jack, how I have made you suffer!"

"Suffer? Yes, I have suffered!" Overcome by the returning pain of the memory, he dropped into a chair, trying to control his voice. "Yes, I have suffered!"

"Forgive me!" she said, slipping on her knees beside him, and burying her head in his lap.

"I was out of my head--I don't know what I did, what I said. It was as though a bomb had exploded. My life was wrecked, shattered--nothing left."

He felt the grief again, even more acutely. He suffered for what he had suffered.

"Jack, I never really could have _abandoned_ you," she cried bitterly.

She raised her eyes toward him and suddenly took notice of the time-tables that lay clutched in his hands. "Oh, you were going away!"

He nodded, incapable of speech.

"You were running away?"

"I was running away--to forget--to bury myself!"

"Oh, Jack!"

"There was nothing here. It was all a blank! I was running away--to bury myself!"