He pulled himself together, smiled mockingly at his own folly of
lingering near the unsightly and not too aromatic corpse. “I must get
into the woods and breathe it out of my system. Did you see the account
of the arrangements for her approaching marriage in this evening’s
paper? Nearly a page--and I read every line.”
When he had finished his drink he rose and departed--and I have not
talked with him since. He resumed his career; we all know how brilliant
it is. As I have said before, I have no sympathy with the silly notion,
bruited about by silly flabby people that women ruin the lives of
strong men. Now and then a woman may be the proverbial last straw that
breaks the camel’s back. But there’s a vast difference between woman
the actuality, woman the mere last straw, and woman the vampire, the
scarlet destroyer as portrayed in novels and so-called histories. Those
mighty men, made or ruined by women--why do we never _see_ them, why do
we only read about them?
I resisted the temptation to follow Beechman’s example and read the
newspaper account of Mary Kirkwood’s approaching apotheosis into the
heaven that is the dream of all true American ladies. There is but
one way to do a thing--and that is to do it. I had destroyed or sent
back the letters; I had resisted the telegram. I could not yet bar my
mind from wandering to her. But I could avoid leading it to her--and
I did. So it was by accident that, the following week, I one morning
let my eye take in the whole of a four-line newspaper paragraph before
I realized what it was about. The purport was that the engagement
between Count von Tilzer-Borgfeldt and Mrs. Kirkwood had been broken
off because of a “failure to agree as to settlements.” This, in the
same newspaper that contained two columns descriptive of the quietly
gorgeous marriage of Frascatoni and Edna in my son-in-law’s new house
near London.
“Failure to agree as to settlements--” Faugh!
I had calmed until all my anger against her was gone and I was thinking
of her as merely human, as the result of her environment like everyone
else. I believed now that where she had deceived me she had also
deceived herself. And I saw as clearly as in the days of my infatuation
that she and I had been made for each other, that our coming together
had been one of those rare meetings of two who are entirely congenial.
It filled me with sadness that fate had not been kind instead of
sardonically cruel, had not brought us together ten years earlier,
before the world had poisoned her originally simple and sincere nature.
But how absurd to linger over impossible might-have-beens! I had gone
as far as I cared to go in the company of those who have made fools of
themselves for love.
I believed I could trust myself with her in the same neighborhood. But
I was not sure, and I would take no chance. A few days after I read of
the broken engagement I departed on the yachting trip to South America.