"Oh, I don't know——" She broke off to ask the waitress whether the car had arrived and was answered in the affirmative. "I don't know about its being true. After all, she made three men happy
before they went West. I don't see that she'd have been any more to be admired if she'd allowed the last two to go wretched."
Tabs half-rose and then reseated himself. "An awful woman! Insatiable! A Lucrezia Borgia, without Lucrezia Borgia's excuse."
"I knew you'd say that." Terry spoke hopelessly in a tone that dragged. "How do you or I know what excuses she had? How do we know why anybody does anything—what hidden reasons they have? And yet we're always so eager to condemn! I wanted to be the first to let you know about Adair because you always used to understand. You would have understood if you'd been the you that you were. I thought that if I explained to you about Maisie—— But what's the use!"
She rose from her chair and stood leaning against the table, looking wilted and pathetic. When she spoke again the heat had gone out of her words and was replaced by an appealing tenderness. "Don't you see what it is—why it is that I don't condemn? I'm so sorry for them—so sorry for you, for myself, for everybody. It hurts me here, Tabs." She laid her hand against her breast. "We all want what we've spent in the lost years. We want it so impatiently. We can't get it; but we want it at once—now. The things one wants are always in the past or the future, so one cheats to get them now."
He hadn't the remotest idea what she was trying to tell him. She was stirred by some deep emotion—some overwhelming loneliness. For a moment it crossed his mind that she also was tempted—fasci
nated by some lurement of dishonor kindred to Adair's. He put the thought from him as preposterous and disloyal. Yet it recurred. Ever since they had met she had been talking curiously—talking about having given away bits of herself to people who were hungry, little bits of herself in wrong directions. She had coupled her own case with this unspeakable Maisie's. What was her problem?
She stood there with her head bowed, like a child self-accused of wrong-doing, with all the flaunting joy of spring tapping against the window on which she had turned her back. Then it dawned on him why she was standing; he was between the door of escape and herself. He stepped aside. As she moved eagerly forward, he caught her by the points of her elbows and arrested her going. The wild violet eyes fluttered up to his fearfully and fell as he towered over her.
"My very dearest!" He spoke gently in a voice from which all passion had been purged. "Don't blame me if I simply can't understand. Though I never become any more to you than I am now, I shall always be your comrade, believing in you and loving you. Remember that."
When he released her she fled from him, leaving him alone in the shabby room.