“I saw it in the Herald,” she began.
“Then I needn’t tell you.” He seemed old and worn and gray—nearer fifty than thirty-five. “I’ve come to say good-bye.”
Emily looked at him, stupefied. They sat in silence a long time. At last he spoke: “I may be gone—who can say how long? Perhaps it will be best to keep her over there. I don’t know—I don’t know,” he ended drearily.
Again there was a long silence. She broke it: “You—are—going—to—to join her?” She could hardly force the words from her lips.
He looked at her in surprise. “Of course. What else can I do?”
Emily sank back in her chair and covered her face.
“What is it?” he asked. “What did you—why, you didn’t think I would desert her?”
“Oh—I—” She put her face down into the bend of her arm. “I didn’t—think—you’d desert me,” she murmured. “I—I didn’t understand.” She faced him with a swift movement. “How can you go?” she exclaimed. “When fate clears the way for you—when this woman who had been hanging like a great weight about your neck suddenly cuts herself loose—then—Oh, how can you? Am I nothing in your life? Is my happiness nothing to you? Have you been deceiving yourself about her and—and me?” She turned away again. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” she said brokenly. “I don’t mean to reproach you—only—I had—I had hoped—That’s all.”
The French clock on the mantel raised its swift little voice until the room seemed to be resounding with a clamorous reminder of flying time and flying youth and dying hope. When he spoke, his voice came as if from a great distance and out of a great silence and calm.
“It has been eleven years,” he said, “since in folly and ignorance I threw myself into the depths—how deep you will never know, you can never imagine. And as I lay there, a thing so vile that all who knew me shrank from me with loathing—she came. And she not only came, but she staid. She did her best to lift me. She staid until I drove her away with curses and—and blows. But she came again—and again. And at last she brought the—the little girl——”