Mal Moulée: A Novel

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"I fear you can not understand our very peculiar situation," he went on. "But you must believe I am telling you the whole truth. I am not misstating one thing. There has been no effort at misleading this woman—this friend of mine. There never was any talk of marriage between us, save to condemn it. She often said she liked me first, because I did not endeavor to convert her from her pet theories, as many men had done. She is very beautiful, and has been annoyed by many suitors. But she is almost a monomaniac upon the subject. You would find less to condemn in my course, if you could understand how peculiar and deep-rooted were her prejudices."

"I do understand," Helena answered. "I once knew just such a person as you describe. We were school-mates, and she shocked us all on graduating day, by an anti-marriage address. So I can understand the type of woman you describe. Yet these views of hers did not necessitate the grave course of action you suggested to her later on, surely."

Percy flushed. "No," he said, "that was the result of our dangerous companionship, and my selfishness. I could not continue in the platonic association so satisfactory to her, and I could not give her up easily, and so the great mistake was made. The error of a lifetime is often committed in a moment, you know. And now—"

"And now," Helena continued, calmly, with white lips as he paused, "now the right course of action for you seems very clearly defined. You can at least tell her of your changed ideas, and offer her marriage. If she declines, you are justified in leaving her. She has no right to compel you to live an unprincipled life. But she will not decline your offer. Even Heloise yielded her opinions and liberal theories to the request of Abelard, and became his wife, you know."

Percy had been walking the room excitedly while she spoke. As she ceased, he turned, and stood facing her with his arms folded.

"There is one more thing to tell you," he said. "Something which renders the advice you give impossible for me to follow. I love another woman with all the fervor of my soul, with all the strength of my heart. Love her with a love that lifts me up to the very gates of heaven, and purifies my whole nature like a refining fire. I see her face, waking or sleeping. I hear her voice in the silence of the night, and above the roar of the street, by day. It is a love which only comes to one man in a thousand, because only one woman in a million can inspire it. This love is at once an agony and a rapture. It asks, it expects no return. It fills my life full here, and it will pervade eternity for me when I die. But, loving like this, even though hopelessly, it would be sacrilege to ask any other woman to be my wife. Even to right a wrong, one should not commit a greater wrong—that of sinning against the holiest and most sacred emotion which ever entered a human heart."

While he spoke, Helena had grown crimson from brow to chin. Then she turned deathly pale, and, burying her face in her hands, she sank into a chair, sobbing wildly.

When he had told her the story of his life, she had wondered at the terrible pain it gave her to listen. But she had believed it was the disappointment she felt in finding her ideal friend so earthly. This together with her sympathy for the unknown woman.

Now, as she listened to his strangely impassioned words, there came to her a revelation that she had given him all the pent-up passion of her soul, all the pure love of her woman's heart. And to what end? The knowledge startled, shocked and terrified her, and she sobbed like a frightened child.