The Making of a Prig Part 37

"Because it is not possible. You are not the kind of woman who changes. You must love me now, because you loved me then. You cannot deny that you loved me then?"

"No," said Katharine, "I cannot deny it."

"Then why do you pretend that you do not love me still? I do not believe it is because of my engagement to your cousin. You are made of finer clay than others, and--"

"Oh, no; that is not the reason," she said, interrupting him impatiently.

"Will you not tell me why it is?" he asked, approaching her again.

There was no mistaking the tenderness in his tone now, and she cast about in her mind for some excuse to dismiss him before she completely lost her power of resistance. "Have I made you so angry that you will never forgive me?"

"No, no; you never made me angry," she protested. "But you made me feel absurd, and that is ever so much worse. I cannot be sure, now, that you are not merely laughing at me. Have you forgotten that you once thought me a prig? I have not altered; I am still a prig. How can you want to marry me when you have that image of me in your mind? It is hopeless to think of our marrying,--you with a secret contempt for me, and I with a perpetual fear of you!"

The man in him alone spoke when he answered her.

"Surely, it is enough that we love each other?"

She shook her head.

"Ah, you know it is not," she replied, with the strange little smile that had so often baffled him. "I--I do so wish you would understand--and go. Or shall I find my father and tell him that you are here?"

He laid his hand against her cheek, and watched her closely.

"Is it all over,--our friends.h.i.+p, your love for me, everything?" he whispered. "Do you remember how sweetly you nursed me three years ago?

Have you forgotten the jolly talks we had together in the Temple? And all the fun we had together in London? Is it all to come to an end like this?"

"I can't marry you; I don't love you enough for that," she said, moving restively under his touch. He stroked her cheek gently.

"Then why do you thrill when I touch you?" he asked. "Why do you not send me away?" It was his last move, and he watched its effect anxiously. She looked at him helplessly.

"I--I do send you away," she said faintly, and he made her join feebly in the laugh against herself. There was something contemptible in her surrender, she felt, as he folded her in his arms and looked down at her with a manly air of possession.

"If this is not love what is it, you solemn little Puritan?" he murmured.

"I don't know," said Katharine dully. She submitted pa.s.sively to his embrace, and allowed him to kiss her more than once.

"Of course you don't know," he smiled. "What a woman you are, and how I love you for it! Don't be so serious, sweetheart; tell me what you are thinking about so deeply?"

It was pity for him, her old genuine love for him reawakening, that made her at last rouse herself to tell him the truth.

"Will you please let me go, Paul?" she asked submissively. And as he loosened his arms and allowed her to go, she took one of his hands and led him with feverish haste round to the table, where Ted's letter still lay like a silent witness against herself. They stood side by side and looked at it, the white envelope on the red table-cloth, and it was quite a minute before the silence was broken. Then Katharine pulled him away again and covered up the letter with her hand and looked up in his face.

"Do you know what is in that letter?" she asked, and without waiting for a reply went on almost immediately. "It is from Ted, to ask me to be his wife."

"And you are going to say--"

"Yes."

Paul smiled incredulously.

"It is impossible," he said. "I decline to believe what you say now, after what you said to me on Monday afternoon."

"Ah," she cried, "I was mad then. You always make me mad when I am with you. You must not talk any more of Monday afternoon; you must forget what I said to you then, and what I have said to you to-day; you must forget that I have allowed you to kiss me--"

"Forget?" interrupted Paul. "Are _you_ going to forget all this?"

She turned away with a little cry.

"You make it so hard for me, Paul; and it seemed so easy before you came!"

"Then it doesn't seem so easy now?"

She evaded his question. "I know I am right, because I thought it all out when you were not here," she went on piteously. "I cannot trust myself even to think properly when you are there; you make me quite unlike myself. That is why I am going to marry Ted. Ted is the sanest person I know; he leaves me my individuality; he doesn't paralyse me as you do; and I am simply myself when I am with him."

"Simply yourself!" echoed Paul. "My dear little girl, whatever in heaven or earth has allowed such a misapprehension to creep into your head?"

"I know what you mean," she said. "I have thought that out, too. You know more about me than anybody in the whole world; Ted will never know as much as you know, although I am going to be his wife. You are the only person I could ever talk to about myself; you are the only person who understands. I know all that. But one does not want that in a husband; one wants some one who will be content with half of one's self, and allow the other half to develop as it pleases. You would never be content with less than the whole, would you, Paul? Ah, that is why I loved you so madly! It is so queer, isn't it, that the very things that make us fall in love are the very things that make marriage impossible?"

He did not speak, and she put her arms round his neck impulsively and drew his head down to hers.

"Don't you understand, dear?" she said. "It is impossible to find everything we want in one person, so we have to be content with satisfying one side of ourselves, or accept the alternative and not marry at all. Ted wants me badly, or I would rather choose not to marry at all. But he must have some one to look after him,--he can't live alone like some men; and I have always looked after him all my life. He has come in my way again now, so I am going to look after him to the end. I am very fond of Ted, and we have learnt to be chums, so I don't think it will be a failure. Oh, do say you understand, Paul?"

"Do you love him?" asked Paul.

"Yes," she replied.

"As you loved me?"

"No," said Katharine, simply. "I could never love any one again like that. I wore myself out, I think, in my love for you. Oh, I know I am spoiled; I know I have only the second best of myself to give to Ted; but if he is content with that, ought I not to be glad to give it?"

"But _you_, your own happiness," he urged brokenly. "Have you no thought for your own happiness?"

"Happiness?" she said, smiling again. "Oh, I do not expect to find happiness. Women like me, who ask for more than life can possibly give them, have no right to expect the same happiness as the people who have found out that it is better to make a compromise and to take what they can get! Oh, I shall never be greatly happy, I know that.

But I do not mind much; it is enough for me that I did once taste the real, glorious happiness, if it was only in s.n.a.t.c.hes."

"Won't you taste it again?" he said, drawing her suddenly to him.

"Won't you give up this impossible scheme of yours, and come to me? We will be married over there by your father,--now,--this very day. We will go abroad, travel, do what you will. Only come with me, Katharine. You belong to me, and to me only; you dare not deny it.

Come with me, Katharine."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I am not going to spoil your life, as you have spoilt mine. You will be a great man, Paul, if you do not marry me."

"Listen," he said, without heeding her. "This is the last time I shall ask you; this is the last time I shall hold you in my arms,--_so_. I shall go away after this, and you will never see me again, nor hear of me again. I shall never kiss you any more, nor ask you to come away with me, nor tell you I love you as I never loved another woman. If you come to me on your knees and beg me to love you again, I will not relent. Do you understand me? This is the last, the very last time.

_Now_ what have you to say? Will you come with me?"

She threw back her head and met his gaze as he bent over her.

"No," she said again. He covered her face with kisses.

"And now?"