Part 70 (1/2)
”No; _I_ am involved. I realise it. And if I am not absolutely honourable and unselfish in this matter I shall involve the woman I had hoped to marry.”
”I thought so,” she said, reverting to her heap of pasteboard.
”If you think so,” he continued, ”could you not be a little generous?”
”How?”
”Divorce me--not by naming her--and give me a chance in life.”
”No,” she said coolly, ”I don't care for a divorce. I am comfortable enough. Why should I inconvenience myself because you wish to marry your mistress?”
”In decency and in--charity--to me. It will cost you little. You yourself admit that it is a matter of personal indifference to you whether or not you are entirely and legally free of me.”
”Did you ever do anything to deserve my generosity?” she inquired coldly.
”I don't know. I have tried.”
”I have never noticed it,” she retorted with a slight sneer.
He said: ”Since my first offence against you--and against myself--which was marrying you--I have attempted in every way I knew to repair the offence, and to render the mistake endurable to you. And when I finally learned that there was only one way acceptable to you, I followed that way and kept myself out of your sight.
”My behaviour, perhaps, ent.i.tles me to no claim upon your generosity, yet I did my best, Winifred, as unselfishly as I knew how. Could you not; in your turn, be a little unselfish now?... Because I have a chance for happiness--if you would let me take it.”
She glanced at him out of her close-set, sleepy eyes:
”I would not lift a finger to oblige you,” she said. ”You have inconvenienced me, annoyed me, disarranged my tranquil, orderly, and blameless mode of living, causing me social annoyance and personal irritation by coming here and engaging in business, and living openly with a common and notorious woman who practises a fraudulent and vulgar business.
”Why should I show you any consideration? And if you really have fallen so low that you are ready to marry her, do you suppose it would be very flattering for me to have it known that your second wife, my successor, was such a woman?”
He sat thinking for a while, his white, care-worn face framed between his gloved hands.
”Your friends,” he said in a low voice, ”know you as a devout woman.
You adhere very strictly to your creed. Is there nothing in it that teaches forbearance?”
”There is nothing in it that teaches me to compromise with evil,” she retorted; and her small cupid-bow mouth, grew pinched.
”If you honestly believe that this young girl is really my mistress,”
he said, ”would it not be decent of you, if it lies within your power, to permit me to regularise my position--and hers?”
”Is it any longer my affair if you and she have publicly d.a.m.ned yourselves?”
”Yet if you do believe me guilty, you can scarcely deny me the chance of atonement, if it is within your power.”
She lifted her eyes and coolly inspected him: ”And suppose I do _not_ believe you guilty of breaking your marriage vows?” she inquired.
He was silent.
”Am I to understand,” she continued, ”that you consider it my duty to suffer the inconvenience of divorcing you in order that you may further advertise this woman by marrying her?”