True to her word, at the appointed time she came knocking at his
door. He was walking up and down--he had not ceased from this
nervous pacing since she had left him and, at the first glance, she
saw how taut every nerve was strung. She went to him directly, and
taking his hand, pressed it to her heart. At her action, so full of
gentleness and poignant feeling, he felt a longing to catch her up
in his arms and surrender weakly each last shred of resentment.
“Inga--dear girl,” he said with difficulty, “you don’t know how
you torture me and the worst is I can’t understand--no; I can’t
understand at all!”
“Mr. Dan, why can’t it go on just as it has?” she said suddenly,
lifting her pleading eyes to his.
“It can’t,” he said roughly. “You know that as well as I do. It’s
gone too far. You’ve made yourself necessary to me. I must have
you near me, by my side, every moment of the day. I don’t believe
in myself; I believe in you, and that’s what I cling to. Good God,
Inga, I don’t understand you! Do you think you have the right to do
this now, and for what reason?” He stopped, looked at her, and said
angrily: “You are not so idiotic to think I care what may have been
your past. It isn’t any such thing as that, is it?”
She shook her head disdainfully.
“That has nothing to do with us,” she said coldly.
“Well, then what?” he said frantically. “At first, I thought you
believed it was only out of gratitude.” He caught a look in her
face and checked himself. “Inga, you _do_ believe that. Good
Heavens, don’t you know, don’t you understand how I have felt
all these weeks, that if I have held myself in it was because I
wouldn’t bind you, until--until I knew there was something to
offer you in exchange--something more than a derelict, a derelict
that was going under? But, child, don’t you know what I am, and
don’t you know what you are--how I long for you and need you?
Don’t you realize what you mean to me, to have you here close at
my side, so young, so gentle, so strong! Haven’t you seen my eyes
following you, craving your young loveliness? Haven’t you felt
how my arms have longed to go out to you, to hold you to me? You
mean everything to me--the end of a nightmare, the birth of a new
day! And you could think that I’ve asked you to marry me out of
gratitude! Inga, Inga; any man would be mad in love with you!”
He had ended turbulently, his hand on her shoulder. She looked at
him long and penetratingly, as though plunging through the barriers
that blocked the way to the truth that lay in his heart, the truth
of the moment and the truth of to-morrow. This scrutiny lasted
so long that he was on the point of breaking out again when she
checked him with her hand.
“Yes; I believe that you love me,” she said gently, almost as
though she were reassuring herself. She added with the same low,
soothing melody in her voice that his ear had learned to crave,
“And I, too--I love you.”
She pronounced this so solemnly that it sounded to him not like a
surrender but as a farewell.
“And yet you won’t marry me,” he said, divining what lay behind.
“That is not necessary,” she said deliberately, “that is,
marriage--your form of marriage.”
He turned like a flash and stood looking at her, his hands on his
hips, open-mouthed.
“This is what I want you to understand,” she said quite naturally.
“What you must understand. Will you hear me and try to see my
point? I have sworn that I would never marry. I can’t--everything
in me is against it. I can’t, I won’t acknowledge that any one or
any system can force me to give myself to any man unless I love
him, unless it is my wish to remain with him. How do I know whether
you will always love me, always need me in your life? How do I know
that I shall always want to be with you?”
“You!” he said, thunderstruck, for, at heart, like most artists,
his nature was not a complex one and his religion was of the day
and the moment. The idea that she could ever cease to love him
struck him as more extraordinary than that he should ever change.
“You can say that!”
“Yes; I can see that that might happen,” she said resolutely. “Even
now, and I do care for you, Mr. Dan--believe me, I do love you,”
she said, clasping her hands and half extending them toward him
in a gesture of entreaty, “I only think of you; I only care what
becomes of you, and I am so happy in that, and yet----”
“And yet,” he said sharply.
“And yet--now--even now,” she said, nodding to herself, as though
the veil of the future had been lifted before her eyes, “I know
that, if the time came when I couldn’t mean anything more, if I
couldn’t follow you where you’d want to go----”
“But you are crazy!” he broke in roughly.
“No, no,” she said sympathetically; “I’m not so crazy--I am
right! For, Mr. Dan, I’m not of your kind--I know it. If you were
strong--if you were yourself, I would never have been in your life;
don’t you see, don’t you understand? I won’t fasten myself to you!
I won’t marry you!”
“That’s it, then,” he exclaimed; “now we have the real reason!”
“No, no,” she said hastily; “you mustn’t think that. That’s a
reason, but not the real one. What I said to you is the truth. I
can’t believe there is any higher right than my own to say when and
how long I shall surrender my liberty----”
By this time, Dangerfield was in a towering rage. Despite her
protestation, he was convinced that the real cause was one of pride.
“In other words, you prefer to be my mistress!” he cried with that
intemperance which only comes when the longing for possession is so
keen that love and hate tremble in the balance.
“No,” she said, with such dignity that he could not meet her
glance; “I am willing to go to you, to live with you, to do
everything I can to help you, so long as we are as we are to-day.
That, to me, is marriage. To stay as your wife when nothing is left
but ashes--no; that is too horrible. If I say this, it’s because
I’ve thought about it and have the courage to believe it, because I
want to keep my self-respect and my freedom.”
“Oh, your freedom!”
“Yes, my freedom, because like that I always will be free, to come,
to go, to give, to think honestly,” she said gently. “Oh, I know
you won’t understand. I know you’re thinking terrible thoughts
about me. And yet--isn’t my way more honest than--than women who
marry and divorce two and three times? Is that respectability to
you?”
“What have you been reading?” he said curtly.
“It’s not what I’ve been reading; it’s what I’ve seen,” she said
slowly. “It’s other women--it’s my mother’s life.” She covered her
face suddenly, and her body shivered. “No, no; don’t ask me to give
up my belief! Don’t ask me to be different than I am! I am wild
and free as you say; please don’t change me.”
“I only understand one thing,” he said angrily, “and that is
you don’t love me. If you did, it would not be a question of
discussion.”
“No, no; you’re wrong, Mr. Dan.” She shook her head and held out
her arms to him. “Mr. Dan, oh, why won’t you see?”
He turned from her, though in her eyes was a yearning toward him,
and her outstretched arms and swaying body drew him to her. He went
away and stood apart, his back turned, shaken by the longing which
beat in his veins and yet resolved not to yield an inch. He did not
believe in her proclaimed theories--they were only excuses. The
real reason lay in her distrust of the future. But, this seemed to
him so monstrous, at the very moment when he was only conscious of
the utter obsession which she had awakened in him, that he raged at
the unreasonableness of the barrier which had been thrown across
the promise of the future. Her very resistance seemed disloyalty to
him, as though another shared her with him and strove against him.
All at once a thought awoke him violently. After all, had she ever
mentioned the real, the true reason?
He wheeled and went back swiftly.
“Inga, is there any one else--is that it?” he blurted out.
The suddenness of the question staggered her. She drew back, but
recovered herself almost immediately.
“I have told you my true reason,” she said, in a low voice.
“You have not answered. I have a right to know the truth. There is
some one else,” he insisted.
“You see, this is just it,” she said solemnly, “you think you
have the right to know everything about me. That’s what I don’t
admit--any such right, either over what has passed or what is
coming.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said nervously. “I don’t care
what has been. Good Lord, I’m not asking more of you than I do of
myself, but----”
“But you must know,” she said, looking at him with her sea-blue
eyes, that in moments of tense emotion seemed to widen and darken.
“Yes; I must know,” he said, exasperated. “I must know something
about you!”
“You mean everything--everything I have done,” she said, shaking
her head, “every thought, all that surrounds me and makes me feel
that something is hidden from the rest of the world. Oh, Mr. Dan,
if I changed like that, if I were like every one else, you wouldn’t
care for me--I know it, I know it! Mr. Dan, isn’t it enough what
I’m willing to give you? Let me be as I am.”
He did by instinct, at last, the thing he should have done at
first. He turned with a smothered exclamation and caught her in his
arms, crying hotly:
“I don’t care for reasons and explanations--words, words! Whether
it’s right or wrong, as you see it or as I see it, whether you want
to or not, I love you, and you’re going to marry me!”
She closed her eyes; her body yielded in his arms and hung there
inertly. Intoxicated, he believed, in this physical surrender, and
with his lips close to her cheek, he poured out his heart to her,
swayed by blinding tempestuous madness that found its answer in
this unreason. Her eyes remained closed, her lips buried against
his shoulder, where her head was pressed in a last instinctive
defense. Suddenly she felt herself growing faint, threw back her
head, avoided his lips, and flung herself loose, giddy and swaying,
her hands to her temples, crying:
“No, no, Mr. Dan; don’t carry me away! It’s not fair!”
“What! You can be calm now?” he said, following her.
“I am not calm--I am not!” she cried. “Don’t you know that I love
you? Oh, it isn’t fair to sweep me off my feet like this; it isn’t
fair!”
A shiver went through her body; she covered her face with her hands
and went to the window and threw it open. A long moment later he
came to her side and laid his hand lightly on her arm.
“I’m sorry, I lost my head, Inga; I couldn’t help it.”
She turned, quite calm again, and looked at him with a smile.
“I’m glad you did,” she said frankly. “It’s something, something to
remember--and it makes me believe.”
“I’m going to ask you once more,” he said solemnly.
The evening was about them, and they stood in the obscurity, their
faces but faintly visible to each other, and when their hands
touched, they trembled.
“I cannot,” she said, turning away. “Wait! You remember that night
when we met the child leading the drunkard? You remember what I
said--about memories? Well, that was my life; I was that child.
My father was that and more--more than you can imagine, more than
I can tell. And my mother lived with him, suffering every insult,
every horror you can imagine. She lived with him, because she
hadn’t the courage to break away--because they had brought her up
to believe that when she married she belonged to her husband, body
and soul. I saw what marriage was then, and I saw my sister, too,
bound and sold to a man she couldn’t care for--a man who had a
little money--a good bargain--and I know what marriage was, to her.
She told me--when she hoped she was going to die. I hate marriage!
I hate a thing that can enslave and degrade women as though they
were brutes and convicts. Now, don’t you see what it means to me to
remain a free human being, just as free in the giving as before?”
He was silent, seeking to evoke out of the past the figure of the
child that her words had thrown before his imagination, amazed at
this revelation of a thinking woman. She, too, was silent a moment.
Then she turned.
“Give me your hand,” she said proudly. “Listen, Mr. Dan: If I take
you and you take me--just you and I, the only ones who count--can
anything be more reverent, more sacred than as we are now?”
Still he did not answer, though he raised his eyes and looked at
her profoundly. There was no confusion in her eyes, no hesitancy in
the softness of her voice as she continued.
“I will go with you, I will never fail you, I will be happy to
give whatever you ask of me. I will do this as long as you love me
and need me. Won’t this mean anything to you, Mr. Dan--won’t this
satisfy you?”
He shook his head. His face in the dusk was stern and gray, for he
realized at last the gravity of the obstacle that lay between them.
The very gentleness in his voice showed her how resolute he, too,
was in his conviction.
“You may think one way, Inga dear,” he said gently; “I think
another. I couldn’t love you if I did you this wrong. I couldn’t,
for wrong it would be to me. If I can’t have you as my wife, I
won’t have you at all.” He waited a moment, and then added slowly
as though weighing each word: “Now I’m not going to be a coward and
threaten to go to the dogs to play on your sympathies. You have
given me more than I had a right to take, and I’m going to try and
hold what we’ve won together. Only--I’ve got to fight it out alone.”
“What do you mean?” she said, putting out her hand as though to
ward off a blow.
For a moment, he lost control of himself--they were close together,
and the dark had obliterated the room.
“I mean I can’t stand it! Flesh and blood can’t stand it!” he broke
out. “Inga, I can’t have you near me--that I can’t do! It’s got to
be one way or the other--all or nothing!”
“You mean I can’t--can’t come here any more?” she said, with a
catch in her voice. “You mean I must go?”
“Yes; you must go,” he said, with a long breath. His hands flashed
up and caught her shoulders and then fell limply again. He turned
with an inarticulate cry and went hurriedly over to the switch and
flung on the lights. At a gesture he gave of mute entreaty she went
to the door, slowly and heavily, with dragging step. With her hand
on the knob she turned.
“I can’t,” she said hopelessly. “There’s nothing in the world I
wouldn’t give you, Mr. Dan--except that. I can’t--it’s my belief;
it’s--it’s me!”