“No,” he admitted; “but you might kiss me good-by now, when you’re going away for a whole week.”.
“Nothing doing, Wilson!” she said with a negative shake of the head. “I’d as lief kiss a Gila monster!”
He made a wry face.
“You’re sure candid,” he said.
She shrugged her shoulders in a gesture of indifference and moved toward the door.
“I can’t make you out, Gaza,” he said. “I used to think you loved me, and the Lord knows I certainly love you! You are the only woman I ever really loved. A year ago I believe you would have married me, but now you won’t even let me kiss you. Sometimes I think there is some one else. If I thought you loved another man, I’d—I’d——”
“No, you wouldn’t. You were going to say that you’d kill me, but you wouldn’t. You haven’t the nerve of a rabbit. You needn’t worry—there isn’t any other man, and there never will be. After knowing you I could never respect any man, much less love one of ’em. You’re all alike—rotten! And let me tell you something—I never did love you. I liked you at first, before I knew the hideous thing that you had done to me. I would have married you, and I would have made you a good wife, too—you know that. I wish I could believe that you do love me. I know of nothing, Wilson, that would give me more pleasure than to know that you loved me madly; but of course you’re not capable of loving anything madly, except yourself.”
“I do love you, Gaza,” he said seriously. “I love you so that I would rather die than live without you.”
She cocked her head on one side and eyed him quizzically.
“I hope you do,” she told him; “for if it’s the truth, I can repay you some measure of the suffering you have caused me. I can be around where you can never get a chance to forget me, or to forget the fact that you want me, but can never have me. You’ll see me every day, and every day you will suffer vain regrets for the happiness that might have been yours, if you had been a decent, honorable man; but you are not decent, you are not honorable, you are not even a man!”