"It isn't an absence of a week or two," she said, trying to show
herself reasonable. "It will be six months before I am able to work
again."
"A whole six months?"
She met the mockery in his tone with quiet determination. "I could not
allow anyone to support me for that period. Do you not see that I must
find something to do in order to remain happy?"
"Happy? You do not consider my side. Do you not see that a haggling
calendar account of weeks and months is not applicable to such service
as you render me? How would the satisfaction of saving the modest sum
I pay you compare with that I should derive from enabling you to get
well as rapidly as possible, untormented by painful necessities?"
There was a strange gleam in his eyes. She looked at him wonderingly.
His rhetoric troubled her, and by dint of it he had managed to make her
scruples seem ungenerous. But she was unconvinced.
"You would be obliged to pay someone else," she replied with cruel
practicality.
"Enough of this," he said, impetuously. "It is absurd. I have
something very different at heart. When I spoke of your future just
now, Constance, it was to tell you that I have come here, to-night, to
ask you to be my wife--to say to you that I love you devotedly and
cannot live without you. This is my errand. It is not friendship I
offer, it is not pity, it is not esteem for your gentle, strong soul,
it is passionate human love."
He paused and there was profound silence in the darkened room where
they could scarcely see each other's faces. Constance trembled like a
leaf. In a moment the whole card-board house of sisterly affection
fell about her ears, and she knew the truth. These were the sweetest
words she had ever listened to, though they stabbed her like a knife.
"Oh!" she whispered, "Oh!"
"Is it such a surprise, Constance?" he murmured, ascribing her accents
of dismay to that source. "You must have known you were very dear to
me."
The dimness gave her time to consider how she should deal with this
startling certainty, the music of which was dancing in her brain. The
meaning of his devotion was now so clear. Yet she had never guessed
either his purpose or the secret of her own disconcerting heart-beats.
"I knew you were fond of me, but it never occurred to me that you could
think of me as a wife."
"Why not? You are beautiful and charming as well as sweet and wise,
and I adore you."
"I liked to feel that we should go on being dear friends for the rest
of our lives," she answered, tingling with the thrill which this avowal
caused her.
From the tremor of her speech he was emboldened to regard the sigh
which followed this simple voicing of the exact truth as an ellipsis
hiding a precious secret.
"Then you love me, Constance?"
Whatever happened, why should he not know? Why should she deny herself
that ecstasy?
"Oh, yes, Gordon, I love you dearly."
"And you will be my wife?"
"How can I, Gordon? You know I must not." There was gentle pleading
in her tone and a tinge of renunciating sadness.
"I mean presently. As soon as you obtain a divorce?"
The ugly word brought back reality. "Oh, no, we must put it from us.
It is a delightful vision, but we must dismiss it forever."
"Why?" he asked, with the resonance of vigorous manhood.
"Because it would be an offence."
"Against what?"
"The eternal fitness of things." This phrase of Mrs. Wilson's rose to
her lips again as a shibboleth. "I have made my mistake," she
murmured. "I must suffer the penalty of it."
"Never!" he ejaculated. "It would be monstrous--monstrous."
There was a momentary silence. While he gazed at her ardently he was
seeking command of himself so as to plead his cause with discriminating
lucidity. To her darkened sight imagination pictured a swift river of
fire flowing between them, across which they could touch their
finger-tips, but no more.
"Do not think," he said, "that I have not considered this question from
your side. It has been in my thoughts night and day for months. The
idea of divorce is repugnant to you--though you have ceased to love the
husband who deeply wronged you. You shrink even more from marrying
again because your children's father is still alive. If he were dead,
the bar would be removed, and you would not hesitate. I appeal to your
common sense, Constance. What sound reason is there why you should
sacrifice your happiness--the happiness of us both?"
"It is not a question of common sense--is it?"
It was a faltering query which followed the assertion. "The question
is, what is right?"
"Amen to that!" he cried. "Yes, right, right. And who says it is not
right?"
She had been so sure she would never marry again that she had never
sought exact knowledge of her church's attitude in this regard, and yet
now she had her fears. She knew that no Roman Catholic could marry
again during the life of a divorced husband or wife, except by special
dispensation, and she was aware of the increasing reluctance of the
officials of her own church in this country to give the sanction of the
marriage service to the remarriage of divorced persons; but she had
never examined the church canon on the subject, for she had flattered
herself that she would never need to. Discussions of the topic which
she had listened to or read had played like lightnings around her
oblivious head, but had served merely to intensify her repugnance to
the blatant divorces and double-quick marriages, which she had seen
heralded from time to time in the daily press, and which had recently
been brought home to her with peculiar force by the events in Mrs.
Wilson's family circle. Now the flare of the lightning was in her own
eyes, and her brain was numb with the emotion of the personal shock.
"Would Mr. Prentiss marry me to you?" she asked, seeking as usual the
vital issue.
"Your clergyman?" His query was merely to gain time. But he loved
directness, too. "Suppose that he would not, there are plenty of
clergymen who would."
"But he is my clergyman."
Gordon moved his chair nearer, and bending forward, took her hand in
both of his.
"Dearest, this question is for you and me to settle, not for any
outsider. It must bear the test of right and wrong, as you say, but I
ask you to look at it as an intelligent human being, as the sane,
noble-hearted American woman you are. The State--the considered law of
the community in which we live--gives you the right to a divorce and
freedom to marry again. Who stands in the way? Your clergyman--the
representative of your church. The church erects a standard of conduct
of its own and asks you to sacrifice your life to it. It is the church
against the State--against the people. It is superstition and
privilege against common sense and justice. I should like to prove to
you by arguments how truly this is so."
"But I would rather not listen to your arguments now," she interposed.
"I am on your side already. My heart is, and--I think my common sense."
His pulses gave a bound. "Then nothing can keep us apart!" he cried,
pressing his lips upon her hands and kissing them again and again.
"You are mine, we belong to one another. Why should a young and
beautiful woman starve her being on such a plea, and reject such
happiness as this?"
She drew her hands gently away, and herself beyond his reach. "Ah, you
mustn't. If my church objects, it must have a reason, and I must hear
that reason, Gordon. I must consult with Mr. Prentiss--with him and
others. He is not an outsider. He was my friend and helper in the
bitterest hours of my life."
"He will do his best to take you from me."