“I tried to,” said Barney, in the sad, bitter voice of the hill-side talk with Oldmeadow. “You see, you don’t know everything, Nancy, though you know so much. I tried to again and again.”
“Yes. I know you did. But only on your own terms. And by then I had come in. Oh, yes, I had, Barney. You didn’t know it. It was long, long before you knew. But I knew it; and so did she and it was more than she could bear. What woman could bear it? I couldn’t have, in her place.” Tears were in Nancy’s voice.
“It’s queer, Nancy,” said Barney, “that—barring Palgrave, who doesn’t count—you and Roger are the only two people she has left to stick up for her. Roger’s just been saying all that to me, you know. The two she tried to crab whenever she got a chance. Well, say it’s my fault, then. Say that I’ve been faithless to my wife and fallen in love with another woman. The fact is there, and you’ve said it now yourself. I don’t love her any longer. I shall never love her again. And I love you. I love you, Nancy, and it’s you I ought to have married; would have married, I believe, if I hadn’t been a blinded fool. I love you, and I can say it now because this may be the end of everything. Don’t let her spoil this, too. Nancy darling, look at me. Can’t you consent to forget Adrienne for this one time, when we may never see each other again?”
“I can’t forget her! I can’t forget her!” Nancy sobbed. “I mustn’t. She’s miserable. She hasn’t stopped loving you. And she’s your wife.”
“Do you want to make me hate her?”
“Oh, Barney—that is cruel of you.”
There was a silence and in it Oldmeadow heard Barney’s car draw up at the gate. He took out his watch. There were only a few more moments left them. Not turning to them he said. “It does her no good, you know, Nancy dear.”
“No. It does her no good,” Barney repeated. “But forgive me. I was cruel. I don’t hate her. I’m sorry for her. It’s simply that we ought never to have married. Forget it, Nancy, and forget her. Don’t let it be, then, that I love you and don’t love my wife. Let it be in the old way. As if she’d never come. As if I’d come to say good-bye to my cousin; to my dearest friend on earth. Look at me. Give me your hands. It’s your face I want to take with me.”
“Five minutes, Barney,” Oldmeadow whispered, as he went past them. Nancy had given him her hands; she had lifted her face to his, and Barney’s arms had closed around her.