Was I longing for him? Was life drearier without him? Well, if I was as weak as that then I must make a new and greater effort. But it was fighting with no line of defence behind me, no husband to stretch out a hand.
Dan came in awhile before noon one day and began to pack a valise. He had taken away some of his belongings before. I had been mending a few articles rather too bulky to be carried downstairs.
"I am going away," he announced, "up to Lake Superior. The Prairie Bird starts this afternoon."
"Oh, Dan!" What should I say? "How long are you likely to stay?" and I tried to make my voice solicitous.
There was no answer for a moment or two. Then he turned around in a fierce fashion, and his eyes were black as night.
"I may as well tell you," he began in a desperate tone, "that I am not coming back at all."
I glanced up at him. I knew the color went out of my face. I was so utterly amazed.
"You'll hear the story, but I may as well have the gratification of telling you." His voice had a peculiar depth, and his face was set with some tremendous emotion. "I am going with the woman I love, and who loves me with a passion you never could know if you lived a hundred years! I should have married her in the beginning, but I was a blind, idiotic fool, and she had a temper. We were never sure of each other. She made a pretence of caring for this or that one when I ought to have wrung the secret out of her heart and mastered her once for all. A woman like that gives royally when she is compelled. You have to extort it out of her, but the drop of honey is worth it all. The old man who took her in hand never found the way to the heart of the flower. That was saved for me. And it is a delicious draught. We are going away together—we shall never come back. What people say is of no importance to us."
"It is Polly Morrison," I gasped. "Oh, Dan, if you loved her, then why did you marry me?" I cried, wounded to the heart's core.
"Because I was a fool. She had gone out of my life, and I said she could not have loved me as she professed. And you were a silly little white kitten, never quite sure whether you would jump on my knee or not, so I made you. But what is there to you? Some cold Puritan blood, some petty sort of tenderness that has no fire in it—nothing to kindle a man to the height of rapture. I tired of you even before she came, and then my life was set aflame. She is the one woman for me. A month, even, with her would outweigh any other woman on the face of the earth."