The tidy young negress opened the door soon afterwards. Pauline asked
for Mrs. Dares. The answer came that Mrs. Dares was at home.
"I wish to see her alone," said Pauline.
"Miss Cora's got a gent'man in the back room," came the answer, "but
there's nobody right here."
Between "right here" and the "back room," Pauline was soon shown the
difference. As she sat in a little prettily-furnished apartment,
awaiting the appearance of Mrs. Dares, she readily apprehended that some
sort of a chamber lay behind. This was, reasonably, the Dareses'
dining-room. But she heard voices from beyond the rough decorative
woollen tapestry which intervened in heavy concealing folds.
At first, seated quietly and thinking of just what she should say to
Mrs. Dares, Pauline quite disregarded these voices.
"I shall tell the plain, unvarnished truth," she reflected. "I shall
not leave a single detail. I shall trust her judgment absolutely."
A moment later she started, with a recognizing sense that she had heard
a familiar tone from one of the voices behind the tapestry. Evidently a
man was speaking. She rose from her seat. She had approached the curtain
instinctively before realizing her act. A new impulse made her withdraw
several steps from it. But the voice had been Kindelon's, and she now
clearly heard Kindelon speak again.
"Cora!" she heard him say, "there are certain wrongs for which no
reparations _can_ be given. I know that the wrong I have done you is of
this sort. I don't attempt to exculpate myself. I don't know why I came
here to bid you this farewell. It was kind of you to consent to see
me. Hundreds of other women would have refused, under like conditions.
But you have often said that you loved me, and I suppose you love me
still. For this reason you may find some sort of consolation hereafter
in the thought that I have made an ambitious marriage which will place
me high in the esteem of the world, which will give my talents a
brilliant chance, which will cause men and women to point to me as a man
who has achieved a fine and proud success.... Good-by, Cora.... Let me
take your hand once--just once--before I go. I'll grant you that I've
behaved like a scamp. I'll grant everything that can be said in my own
disfavor. Good heavens! don't look at me in that horribly reproachful
way, you--you make me willing to renounce this marriage wholly! Cora, I
will do so if you'll pardon the past! I'll come back to you, I'll devote
my future life to you! only tell me that you forgive and forget!"
"No, no," Pauline now heard a struggling and seemingly agonized voice
reply. "There is no undoing what you have done. Keep your promise to
_her_, as you have broken your faith with _me_. I do not say that my
love is dead yet; I think it will not die for a long time ... perhaps
not for years. But my respect is wholly dead.... I will not touch your
hand; I will not even remain longer in your presence. I--I have no
vengeful feeling toward you. I wish you all future happiness. If you
shine hereafter as your talents deserve, I shall hear of your fame, your
triumph, with no shadow of bitterness in my soul. And my chief hope, my
chief anxiety, will be for the woman whom you have married. I know her
enough to know that she is full of good impulses, full of true and fine
instincts. You will go to her with an aching conscience and a stained
honor. But I pray that after she has lifted you into that place which
you seek to gain through her, she may never know you as I have known
you--never wake to my anguish of disappointment--never realize my depths
of disillusion!"
Pauline waited to hear no more. She thrust aside the drapery of the
doorway and passed into the next room.
Cora uttered a swift and smothered cry. Kindelon gave a terrible start.
Then a silence followed. It seemed to Pauline a most appreciable
silence. She meant and wished to break it, yet her speech kept defying
her will, and resisted her repeated effort at due control. But at length
she said, looking straight at Kindelon,--
"I have heard--I did not mean to hear--I don't want you to say a single
word--there is nothing for you to say. I simply appear before
you--before you both! I--I think that is enough. I know every thing now.
You ... must have been certain that if I had previously known--that if
you had not told me a falsehood I ... I ... should never...."
And then poor Pauline reeled giddily, putting forth both hands in a
piteous, distraught way.... When Kindelon caught her she had already
lost consciousness....
The sense of blank was a most acute one when she awoke. Her first clear
thought was, "How long have I been unconscious?" ... And then came
remembrance, and with remembrance the pain of a deep-piercing hurt.
No one was near by except Mrs. Dares. Pauline lay upon a lounge; she
felt the yielding of cushions beneath her head and shoulders. Her first
audible sign of revived consciousness was a little tremulous laugh.
"That's you, Mrs. Dares?" she then said. "I--I must have fainted. How
funny of me! I--I never fainted before."
Mrs. Dares put both arms about her, and kissed her twice, thrice, on the
cheek.
"My poor, dear, unhappy lady!" she said. "I am sorry--so miserably
sorry."
Pauline repeated her tremulous laugh. She was beginning to feel the
reassertion of physical strength. "I--I came here to see only you, Mrs.
Dares," she now said, "but it was fated otherwise. And ... and yet it
has all been better--far better." Here she laughed again, and a little
hysterically. "Oh, how superb a failure I've made of it, haven't I? I
thought the 'Morning Monitor' had dealt me my last _coup_. But one other
still remained!"
She lay silent for some little time, after this, and when Mrs. Dares
presently spoke to her the lids which had dropped over her eyes did not
lift themselves. It was so sweet, so tender, so exquisitely gentle a
voice that it brought not the slightest exciting consequences.
"He is greatly to blame. I do not excuse him any more than you will. But
you must not think the worst of him. You must think him weak, but you
must not think him entirely base. I look at his conduct with impartial
eyes. I try to look at everybody with impartial eyes. He was far below
you in the social scale--that is the phrase which means inferiority
nowadays, and I am afraid it will mean inferiority for many a year to
come. He had engaged himself to my dear Cora. He meant to marry her.
Then he met you. Everything about you dazzled and charmed him. It was
yourself as much as your position, your wealth, your importance. He
cared for you; he was enchanted by you; his nature is not a deep nature,
though his intellect is large and keen. He is almost the typical
Irishman, this Kindelon--the Irishman who, in statesmanship, in
governance, in administrative force, has left poor Ireland what she is
to-day. He meant well, but he had not enough _morale_ to make this
well-meaning active and cogent. The temptation came, and he yielded at
once. There was no premeditated dishonor. The strain was put upon him
and he could not bear the strain--that is all. Such men as he never can
bear such a strain. There was not a hint of coldbloodedness in his
conduct--there was none of the fortune-hunter's deliberate method. There
was, indeed, no method at all; there was nothing except an inherent
moral feebleness. Brilliant as he is, exceptional as he is, he can no
more help consent and acquiescence in any matter which concerns his
personal, selfish desires, than the chameleon can help taking the tints
of what surrounds it. And I do not believe that he knows, at this hour,
whether he loves you or my poor Cora the best. That is he--that is
Kindelon--that is the fascinating, distressing race that he represents.
He loved you both; his big, expansive Irish heart was quite capable of
doing that. But his insecure, precarious conscience was incapable of
pointing to him the one straight, imperative path. Hence your own
sorrow, my dear, ill-used lady, and hence the sorrow of my poor
unfortunate Cora!"
Pauline's eyes slowly unclosed as Mrs. Dares's last words were spoken.
"You speak like a sybil!" she murmured.
"But you speak too late. If I had only talked with you a little sooner!
I should have been so prepared for such words _then_! Now they only come
to me like mockery and ... and sarcasm!"
Again Mrs. Dares stooped and kissed her.
"God knows," she said, "that I mean them for neither!"
"God help me from believing that you do!" answered Pauline. She raised
herself, and flung both arms about Mrs. Dares's neck, while a sudden
paroxysm of sobs overmastered and swayed her.