I gave her the gist of Tolstoi's romance—the woman who is married to an old man and runs away with a young one, living to see him weary of the position in which she places him, and dying by her own act.
As she listened attentively, I went on before she could object to my parable.
"It all amounts to the same thing. There's no happiness except in right; and no right that doesn't sooner or later—sooner rather than later—end in happiness. You've told me more than once you didn't believe that; and if you don't I can't help it."
I fell back in my seat, because for the moment I was exhausted. It was not merely the actual situation that took the strength out of me, but what I dreaded when the man came for his prize from the smoking-car. I might count on Larry Strangways to aid me then, but as yet he had not recognized my struggle by so much as glancing round.
Nor had I known till this minute how much I cared for the little creature before me, or how deeply I pitied the man she was deserting. I could see her as happier conditions would have made her, and him as he might have become if his nature had not been warped by pride. Any impulse to strike back at him had long ago died within me. It might as well have died, since I never had the nerve to act on it, even when I had the chance.
She turned on me again, with unexpected fierceness.
"It doesn't matter whether I believe all those things or not—now. It's too late. I've left home. I've—I've gone away with him."
Though I felt like a spent prize-fighter forced back into the ring, I raised myself in my chair. I even smiled, dimly, in an effort to be encouraging.
"You've left home and you've gone away; but you won't have gone away with him till—till you've actually joined him."
"I've actually joined him already. His things are there beside that chair." She nodded backward. "By the time we've passed Providence he'll be—he'll be getting ready to come for me."