“Yes, some few years ago—two years before we met at Cragsfoot.”
“That’s how you come not to have married?”
“I don’t know; many men don’t marry. Well—probably. But it’s your story we’re after, not mine.”
“Yes, but your having had an affair like that may help you—may help me to make you understand. What is it that sometimes seems to tie two people together in spite of themselves? Arsenio’s coming back to me was just chance—chance on chance. He was in this very place where we are now; in very low water, living in the little house I’m living in now, and employed as clerk to a wine merchant. He had given up all thoughts of me, of coming back to England. He couldn’t do it; he hadn’t the money. The English papers hardly ever came his way. One day a man came in, for a bottle of whisky—an Englishman; he had a copy of the Times with him, and tore off a sheet of it to wrap the bottle in, and threw the rest on the floor. When he was gone, Arsenio picked it up and read it. And he saw the announcement of the date of my wedding—July the twenty-first.”
“He told me, that day in London, that he had already decided to come to England when he saw that.”
“He couldn’t tell you all the truth that day. This is what happened. Seeing that notice, a queer fancy took him; he would see whether that number—my number he called it—would bring him luck. He scraped together some money, went over to Monte Carlo, and won, won, won! His luck went to his head; everything seemed possible. He came straight to England—to see if the luck held, he said. You can guess the rest.”
“Pretty well. You must have had a time of it, though!”
“I think my mind really made itself up the moment I saw Arsenio. The rest was—tactics! I mustn’t see Waldo; I invented excuses. Waldo mustn’t see Arsenio—that at all costs! He always suspected Arsenio, and Arsenio might give it away—you know his malicious little airs of triumph when he scores! You picture me as miserable? No! I was fearful, terrified. But I was irrepressibly excited—and at last happy. My doubt was done and ended.”
“You were not ashamed?” I ventured.
“Yes, I was ashamed too—because of Aunt Bertha and Sir Paget. Because of them, much more than because of Waldo. They loved me; they had taken me to be, as it were, their daughter. Between Waldo and Arsenio it had always been a fight—yes, from that first day at Cragsfoot. I was the prize! But in a way I was also just a spectator. I mean—in the end I couldn’t help which won; something quite out of my power to control had to decide that. And that something never had any doubt. How could I go against everything that was real in me?”