“She has had too much to bear,” said Adrienne. “I saw her again, too, at the end, when she came to Palgrave. She can never forgive me. Meg is happy now, but she will never forgive me either. I wrought havoc in their lives, didn’t I?”
“Well, you or fate. I don’t blame you for any of that, you know,” said Oldmeadow.
“I don’t say that I blame myself for it,” said Adrienne. “I may have been right or I may have been wrong. I don’t know. It is not in things like that that I was bad. But what we must face is that I wrought havoc; that if it hadn’t been for me they might all, now, be really happy. Completely happy. If I had not been there Palgrave would not have been so sure of himself. And if I had not been there Nancy and Barney would have married.”
“I don’t know,” said Oldmeadow. “If Barney hadn’t fallen in love with you he might very probably have fallen in love with some one else, not Nancy.”
“Perhaps, not probably,” said Adrienne. “And if he had he would have stayed in love with her, for Barney is a faithful person. And it may have been because I was so completely the wrong person for him that he came to know so quickly that Nancy was completely the right one. What I feel is that anybody but Nancy would always have been, really, wrong. And now that he loves her but is shackled, there’s only one thing more that can be done. I have often thought of it; I needn’t tell you that. But, till now, I could never see my way. It’s you who have shown it to me. In what you said the other day. It’s wonderful the way you come into my life, Mr. Oldmeadow. You made me feel that I had a friend in you; a true, true friend. And I know what a friend Nancy and Barney have. So the way opens. We must set Barney free, Mr. Oldmeadow. He and Nancy must be free to marry. You and I can do it for them and only you and I.”
“What do you mean?” Oldmeadow murmured as, after her words, the silence had grown deep between them. He repeated, using now the name inevitably and forgetting the other day. “What do you mean, Mrs. Barney?”
To-day she did not flush, but to-day there was a reason for her acceptance. It was, he saw in her next words, only as Barney’s wife that she could help him.
“He must divorce me,” she said. “You and I could go away together and he could divorce me. Oh, I know, it’s a dreadful thing to ask of you, his friend. I’ve thought of all that. Wait. Let me finish. I’ve thought of nothing else since the other day. It came to me in the night after you had been so wonderful to me; after that wonderful thing had happened to us. You felt it, too, I know. It was as if we had taken a sacrament together. I’m not a Christian. You know what I mean. We felt the deepest things together, didn’t we. And it’s because of that that I can ask this of you. No one else would understand. No one else would care for me enough, or for him. And then, you could explain it all to him and no one else could do that. You could explain that it had been to set him free. To set me free. Because they’d have to think and believe it was for my sake, too, that you did it, wouldn’t they? so as to have it really happy for them; so that it shouldn’t hurt. When it was all over you could go and explain why you had done it. All we have to do, you know, is to stay in a hotel together; I bearing your name. It’s very simple, really.”
He lay staring at her, overwhelmed. The tears had risen to his eyes as her beauty and her absurdity were thus revealed to him, and as she spoke of their sacrament; but amazement blurred all his faculties. He had never in his life been so amazed. And when he began to emerge, to take possession of himself again, it was only of her he could think; not of himself or Nancy and Barney. Only of her and of her beauty and absurdity.
“Dear Mrs. Barney,” he said at last, and he did not know what to say; “it’s you who are wonderful, you alone. I’d do anything, anything for you that I could. Anything but this. Because, truly, this is impossible.”