It Happened in Japan

by Baroness Albert d' Anethan

"I did it for the best," she murmured in a smothered voice, "Dick, I did it for your sake."

He took a step towards her, and clasped her by the wrist.

"Oh, Pearl! You dare to stand there and to tell me that lie. You tell me you did it for my sake, when you know it was only of yourself, it was only of your own reputation, your own good name, you were thinking. I'm not a fool, Pearl, whatever you may think me, and it was easy enough to read through the falseness, the hypocrisy of that letter you wrote me. Why, during all those years we knew and loved each other, were you not always considering, always fearful of what the world--your little mean world--would say? And it was just because you drew your own conclusions as to what would be the verdict of that world if you married me, that without one word of warning, you left me. And you tell me now you did it for the best, that you did it for my sake. May God forgive you!" and walking to the chimney-piece Martinworth buried his face in his hands.

Pearl was very pale as she came and stood before him.

"And you believe that," she said--"you believe that of me? You are actually capable of believing that I, whom you loved all those years, and who, despite your present accusations, in spite of that overwhelming fear of the world's opinion you speak of, you well know, braved that world many and many a time for your sake. You are capable of believing that I, who already had sacrificed so much for you, could lie to you--lie to you at such a supreme moment? If such is the case, Lord Martinworth, I feel, that whatever may have been the motive at the time, the mean, interested one that you lay to my charge, or the single-hearted one of self-sacrifice, which before God I swear it was, whatever I repeat, may have been the motive--I bless Heaven for the instinct that prompted me to leave you. The man who can harbour such a thought of the woman he professes to love, is only worthy to be despised and scorned, as I despise and scorn you now!"

Martinworth had evidently not expected this furious onslaught. His face expressed the utmost astonishment, the utmost dismay.

"Pearl--Pearl," he cried, "calm yourself, I pray you. What are you calling me? What are you saying? If I have wronged you----"

"Wronged me," she interrupted, as she cast the hand away that he had stretched towards her, "you have not only wronged me, but you have insulted me with the injustice of such mean, such paltry thoughts. Oh, leave me. Why have you come here to disturb me? I have been happy enough these last three forgetting years. Leave me, I implore you. You are married. Go back to your wife, to the wife who loves you, and leave me in peace."

Martinworth looked up with a strange light in his eyes. "My wife?" he said, "what has she got to do in this matter? Have you seen her?"

"Yes, she has been here. Go back to her. Go back and leave me. This interview is most distressing to me. It is painful to us both. It were surely best to end it? Perhaps later on we may be calmer, and able to meet without mutual reproaches, mutual regrets. Now we are both of us angry and bitter. Oh! how could you say those things of me? I beg you to go. I can never, never forget what you have just said. Go, Dick--go!"