"Now, this is no laughing matter," he rebuked her levity. "If you're
really--stuck on each other--it may bust you all to pieces before
you're done with it--unless you quit in time."
"What do you mean by 'quit'?"
"Give up seeing him altogether. It would be safer."
"Yes, so it would. But what's that got to do with it?"
"A woman can't afford to take chances," he retorted impressively.
"It seems to me the people who get the most fun out of life are the
ones who do take chances. Your little tin hero, Roosevelt, for
instance--you like him because he'd rather hunt a lion or a trust than
a sure thing. Jim Horan didn't eat smoke for the money in it, but
because he thought a wall might fall on him some day--or might not.
That's what he wanted to find out. Well, perhaps I want to find out if
a wall will fall on me some day--or not."
Al was astounded. There was something more than bold, something hardly
decent in the comparison of her own dubious flirtation to a great
fireman's martyrdom or a soldier-statesman-sportsman's courage and
career.
"But, Georgia," he expostulated, "you speak like a man in a manhole.
Horan and Roosevelt did their duty taking chances."
"Rubbish," she said. "They acted according to their natures and I will
act according to mine--some day."
He looked unutterably distressed, for he loved her, and foresaw ruin
enfolding her. He knew that women aren't allowed to act according to
their natures, if their natures are as natural as all that.
"I haven't seen Jim for over a year," she went on, "nor heard of him
for ten months. He may be dead. He is the same as dead to me. My
heart is the heart of a widow--grateful for her weeds. The Church may
say otherwise--and I might obey unwillingly--but my own being tells me
that there is nothing wrong in my love for Mason Stevens--any more than
it's sin to breathe air or drink water. That's how we're made. When I
lived with Jim, I played no tricks. But that's over now, it's over for
good. What's the difference whether he's under the sod or above it, so
far as I'm concerned?" Her eyes were alight and she walked back and
forth, gesticulating like a Beveridge, persuading herself that what she
wished was just because she wished it. "I've got a few good years of
youth left. I'll not throw them away for a religious quibble."
"You mean divorce and marry again--openly!"
"What does the ceremony matter? I'm not sure we'd take the trouble of
going through it," she shrugged her shoulders, "the Church says that it
means nothing anyway; that it makes the sin no less."
"But, Georgia," he was beginning now to fear for her common sense, "for
God's sake, if you do such a thing, first go through the civil form
anyway."
She laughed triumphantly. She had caught him. "There spoke your
heart. Of course, we'll have a legal marriage. You see the Church
hasn't convinced you, either, that divorce and remarriage is the same
as adultery."
She had crystallized her vague desires into positive determination by
the daring sound of her own words.