Part 73 (1/2)
There was a silence; then I said:
”Has this pa.s.sionate quest of her so wholly absorbed and controlled you that all else counts as nothing?”
”Yes, yes! You know it. You knew it at Otsego! Nothing else matters. I will not permit anything else to matter! And, lest you deem me cold, thankless, inhuman, ask of yourself, Euan, why such a lonely girl as I should close her eyes and stop her ears and lock her heart and--and turn her face away when the man--to whom she owes all--to whom she is--utterly devoted--urges her toward emotions--toward matters strange to her--and too profound as yet. So I ask you, for a time, to let what sleeps within us both lie sleeping, undisturbed. There is a love more natural, more imperious, more pa.s.sionate still; and--it has led me here! And I will not confuse it with any other sentiment; nor share it with any man--not even with you--dear as you have become to me--lonely as I am,--no, not even with you will I share it! For I have vowed that I shall never slake my thirst with love save first in her dear embrace.... After these wistful, stark, and barren years--loveless, weary, naked, and unkind----” Suddenly she covered her face with her hands, bowing her head to her knees.
”Yet you bid me hope, Lois?” I asked under my breath.
She nodded.
”You make me happy beyond words,” I whispered.
She looked up from her hands:
”Is that all you required to make you happy?”
”Can I ask more?”
”I--I thought men were more ruthless--more imperious and hotly impatient with the mistress of their hearts--if truly I am mistress of yours, as you tell me.”
”I am impatient only for your happiness; ruthless only to secure it.”
”For my happiness? Not for your own?”
”How can that come to me save when yours comes to you?”
”Oh!... I did not understand. I had not thought it mattered very greatly to men, so that they found their happiness--so that they found contentment in their sweethearts' yielding.... Then my surrender would mean nothing to you unless I yielded happily?”
”Nothing. Good G.o.d! In what school have you learned of love!”
She nodded thoughtfully, looking me in the eyes.
”What you tell me, Euan, is pleasant to think on. It rea.s.sures and comforts; nay, it is the sweetest thing you ever said to me--that you could find no happiness in my yielding unless I yield happily.... Why, Euan, that alone would win me--were it time. It clears up much that I have never understood concerning you.... Men have not used me gently.... And then you came.... And I thought you must be like the others, being a man, except that you are the only one to whom I was at all inclined--perhaps because you were from the beginning gentler and more honest with me.... What a way to win a woman's heart! To seek her happiness first of all!... Could you give me to another--if my happiness required it?”
”What else could I do, Lois?”
”Would you do that!” she demanded hotly.
”Have I any choice?”
”Not if your strange creed be sincere. Is it sincere?”
”There is no other creed for those who really love.”
”You are wrong,” she said angrily, looking at me with tightened lips.
”How wrong?”
”Because--I would not give you to another woman, though you cried out for her till the heavens fell!”
I began to laugh, but her eyes still harboured lightning.