A Woman Martyr

by Alice M. Diehl

"Her husband!" For a moment she was off guard, she spoke with scathing contempt. "A husband, who leaves his wife month after month, year after year, without a word!"

"A real woman would have searched for me the world through, when she had money to command as you have had!" he said, leaning back, folding his arms, and contemplating her with a savage, vindictive expression.

"Money? I have only an allowance!" she exclaimed, bitterly, and with a real bitterness. It had sometimes maddened her since his return, when she thought of what she might do if only her uncle had given her the control of a small fortune, instead of doling out an income. "And that is where our difficulty lies, Victor. I have taken a week to think hard about it. Suppose we hire a yacht under another name, and wander about for a time, and then I appeal to my uncle? I think he would be inclined to forgive--everything."

"If you remember, my dear, that was my idea, not yours," he said, leaning back in his chair, puzzled. Was it possible that Paul Naz, and the people who coupled Joan with that "milord" Paul had spoken of, were mistaken, and that she cared for him still--only her pride and vanity had kept her from showing it? "Not a yacht--bah, I detest the sea--and to be shut up in a boat! Not even with you, my beautiful wife, could I stand such gêne! No, no, I have a better idea than that. Let us lose ourselves in Paris! You know nothing, you are still a baby, if you have not seen and enjoyed life there! But you are a baby--hein? I must teach my child-wife what life really is."

Slightly exhilarated by his new view of Joan, as possibly as potentially great a victim of his fascinations as poor deluded Vera, he sprang up, and going to her, took her in his arms. The instinct to fling, thrust him violently from her, was cruelly strong. But she--in an agony of woe and love--remembered Vansittart, and mentally thought "for his sake, for his sake," as she willed passively to endure, while Victor kept his lips long and firmly on hers. At last she could bear it no longer, and freed herself with a sudden frantic effort.

"You will suffocate--choke me!" she gasped, and her eyes seemed as if starting from her head--her voice came thickly from her quivering lips.

"Well, I will be gentler, my tender dove!" he said a little satirically. He doubted her again. If she had had "any mind of him," would not that kiss of his have effectually broken down all barriers of pique, and launched her on a sea of passion? But there was charm to such a gourmet in love, as he considered himself, in appropriating what she disliked to give. He took her hand. "Come and sit with me on our friend the medico's sofa under the window there!" he coaxingly said. "I want to look at my wife, to kiss her, embrace her after these years of longing, of waiting!"

She gave him an involuntary glance of horror and terror. "Presently," she stammered. "First let me give you the money I have brought you--let us settle about our journey, when it is to be."

He stood still for a few moments, gazing steadily at her. That look had told him much--the mention of money when he asked for love told him still more.

"Very well," he said, after a pause, during which she wondered whether it would end in his killing her--in that lonely house she was at the mercy of any sudden outburst of anger of his. Just then she felt that death would be preferable to another kiss of the kind which still stung her icy lips.