"Ella, Ella, why will you not trust me?" he said, when she had flung herself into a chair. He was standing over her with his hands clasped behind him. He was beginning to understand something of her nature; of the nature of the woman to whom love has come as a thief in the night.
He was beginning to perceive that she had, in her ignorance, been ready to entertain love without knowing what was entailed by entertaining him. "If you would only trust me, all would be well."
She almost leaped from her chair.
"Would it?" she cried. "Would all be well? Would it be well with my soul? Would it be well with both of us in the future? Would it be well with my husband?"
He laughed.
"I know your husband," he said.
"And I know him, too," said she. "He cares for me no more than I care for him, but he has never been otherwise than kind to me. I think of him--I think of him. I know the name that men give to the man who tries to make his friend's wife love him. It is not my husband who has earned that name, Mr. Courtland."
He looked into her face, but he spoke no word. Even he--the lover--was beginning to see, as in a glass, darkly, something of the conflict that was going on in the heart of the woman before him. She had uttered words against him, and they had stung him, and yet he had a feeling that, if he had put his arms about her again, she would have held him close to her as she had done before; she would have given him kiss for kiss as she had done before. It is the decree of nature that the lover shall think of himself only; but had he not told Phyllis that his belief was that Nature and Satan were the same? He was sometimes able to say, "/Retro me, Sathana/"--not always. He said it now, but not boldly, not loudly--in a whisper. The best way of putting Satan behind one is to run away from him. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Yes, but, on the whole, it is safer to show him a clean pair of heels than to enter on an argument with him, hoping that he will be amenable to logic. Herbert Courtland said his, "/Retro me/," in a whisper, half hoping, as the gentlewoman with the muffins for sale hoped, that he would escape notice. For a few moments he ceased to think of himself. He thought of that beautiful thing before him--she was tall, and her rosy white flesh was as a peach that has reached its one hour of ripeness--he thought of her and pitied her.
He had not the heart to put his arms about her, though he knew that to do so would be to give him all the happiness for which he longed. What was he that he should stand by and see that struggle tearing her heart asunder?
"My poor child!" said he, and then he repeated his words, "My poor child! It would have been better if we had never come together. We are going to part now."
She looked at him and laughed in his face.
He did not know what this meant. Had she been simply acting a part all along? Had she been playing a comedy part all the while he was thinking that a great tragedy was being enacted? Or was it possible that she was mocking him? that her laugh was the laugh of the jailer who hears a prisoner announce his intention of walking out of his cell?
"Good-by," said he.
She fixed her eyes upon his face, then she laughed again.
He now knew what she meant by her laugh.
"Perhaps you may think that you have too firm a hold upon me to give me a chance of parting from you," said he. "You may be right; but if you tell me to go I shall try and obey you. But think what it means before you tell me to leave you forever."
She did think what it meant. She looked at him, and she thought of his passing away from her forever more. She wondered what her life would be when he should have passed out of it. A blank? Oh, worse than a blank, for she would have ever present with her the recollection of how he had once stood before her as he was standing now--tall, with his brown hands clenched, and a paleness underlying the tan of his face. "The bravest man alive"--that was what Phyllis had called him, and Phyllis had been right. He was a man who had fought his way single-handed through such perils as made those who merely read about them throb with anxiety.
This was the man of whom she knew that she would ever retain a memory --this was the man whom she was ready to send back to the uttermost ends of the earth.
And this was to be the reward of his devotion to her! What was she that she could do this thing? What was she that she should refrain from sacrificing herself for him? She had known women who had sacrificed themselves to men--such men! Wretched things! Not like that man of men who stood before her with such a look on his face as it had worn, she knew, in the most desperate moments of his life, when the next moment might bring death to him--death from an arrow--from a wild beast--from a hurricane.
What could she do?
She did nothing.
She made no effort to save herself.
If he had put his arms about her and had carried her away from her husband's house to the uttermost ends of the earth, she would not have resisted. It was not in her power to resist.
And it was because he saw this he went away, leaving her standing with that lovely Venetian mirror glittering in silver and ruby and emerald just above her head.
"You have been right; I have been wrong," said he. "Don't try to speak, Ella. Don't try to keep me. I know how you love me, and I know that if I ask you to keep me you will keep me until you die. Forgive me for my selfishness, my beloved. Good-by."
