“No, no, Reggie, I don’t want you to touch me,” I said. “Go away! I tell
you go away!”
“You don’t understand,” said Reggie. “I’ve come to take you home. You’ve
won out. I’m going to _marry_ you!”
He looked as if he were conferring a kingdom on me.
“Listen to me, Reggie,” I said. “I can never, never be your wife now.”
“Why not? What have you done?” His old anger and suspicion were
mounting. He was looking at me lovingly, yet furiously.
“I’ve done nothing--nothing--but I cannot be your wife.”
“If you mean because of Boston--I’ve forgiven everything. I fought it
all out in Montreal and I made up my mind that I had to have you. So I’m
going to _marry_ you, darling. You don’t seem to understand.”
Further and further away I had backed from him, but now he was right
before me. I looked up at Reggie, but a vision arose between us-- Paul
Bonnat’s face. Paul who was waiting for me, who had offered to share his
all with me, and somehow it seemed to me more immoral to marry Reggie
than to live with the man I loved.
“Reggie Bertie,” I said, “it’s you who don’t understand. I can never be
your wife because--because--” Oh, it was very hard to drive that look of
love and longing from Reggie’s face. Once I had loved him, and although
he had hurt me so cruelly in the past, in that moment I longed to spare
him the pain that was to be his now.
“Well? What is it, Marion? What have you done?”
“Reggie, it’s this: I no longer love you!” I said.
There was silence, and then he said with an uneasy laugh:
“You don’t mean that. You are angry with me. I’ll soon make you love me
again as you did once, Marion. You’ll do it when you are my wife.”
“No--no--I never will,” I said steadily, “because--because--there’s
another reason, Reggie. There’s some one else, some one who loves me,
and whom I _adore_!”
I hope I may never see a man look like Reggie did then. He had turned
gray, even to his lips. He just stared at me, and I think the truth of
what I had said slowly sank in upon him. He drew back.
“I hope you’ll be happy!” he said, and I replied:
“Oh, and I hope you will be, too.”
I followed him to the door and he kept on staring at me with that dazed
and incredulous look upon his face. Then he went out and I closed the
door forever on Reggie Bertie.
* * * * *
The expressman had just put my trunk in the studio. I opened the door of
the little room that Paul had fixed up for me.
“Are you afraid, darling?” he asked. “Are you going to regret giving
yourself to a poor devil like me?”
I answered him as steadily as my voice would let me, for I was
trembling.
“I am yours as long as you love me, Paul.”