“It means first of all that—that I’m awfully weak.”
“It isn’t weak, Regina, to—to love.”
“It’s weak for a soldier to make love an excuse for not fighting.”
“But you’re not a soldier.”
“Oh yes, I am; and so are you. We’re all soldiers now—every one in the
world. We keep telling ourselves—we keep telling one another—that we’re
fighting for right. It’s our great justification. But what’s the use of
fighting for public right if we go and do wrong privately?”
“But it isn’t right for you to throw yourself away on a man you don’t
care for.”
“It’s right for me to stand by my word—what is practically my word—till
something relieves me from the necessity.”
“And do you think anything ever will?”
“That’s not what I have to consider. If I do what I know I ought to do
I’ve only to wait—and let the next thing come.”
“And what you know you ought to do—are you going to do it?”
She looked up at me pleadingly, quiveringly, with clasped hands.
“I don’t want to do—to do anything else. Oh, Frank, I hope you won’t make
me!”
It was not this unexpected collapse that made me tremble; it was not
this confession; it was the knowledge that I had her in my power. She
had seemed so far above me—ever since I knew her; she had seemed so
far beyond me, so strong, so aloof, so ice pure, so inflexibly and
inaccessibly right! And now she was ready to come to me if I insisted on
taking her.
But the hungry beast in me was not yet satisfied with her avowals.
“Could I, Regina—could I—make you?”
I once saw in the eyes of a spaniel that knew it was going to be shot the
beseeching, submissive, helpless look I saw here.
“You know what I’ve been doing, Frank—the last two years—just to be where
I—where I could—hear about you—occasionally—and see you perhaps—when you
couldn’t see me.”