"For me?"
He half started up now, but she raised a hand to restrain him.
"The servants!" she whispered. Indeed, even as she spoke she saw the livery of the butler disappearing at the tall glass doors letting out to the gallery. She did not know that the butler had seen much and heard somewhat; that being a butler he was wise.
"But it's got to be—we've got to go through now!" he went on savagely. "Why did you start this, then? Why did you let me know?"
"It was he who started it in me—ambition! No, I always had it. From the day I was born I wanted to climb, to win, to be rich, to have things in my hands. All girls want that, I suppose, till they know how little it is. So I married him—I tried to, and I did. I knew he had money.... But then there was more I wanted, after all. I only wanted that something else, too, that any woman wants—what she's got to have, once in her life, rich or poor, because she's a woman—some one who truly loves her for herself as she is, because she is what she is—because she's a woman!
"Oh, I looked all around me here, a long time after I came here, for what I'd missed. I've never been happy here. I didn't have it. I wanted it. At last I saw it. I wanted it. Its price is ruin—for two, you and me. I'm like you. If it's wrong, I don't know where the wrong began! I didn't mind, so far as I was concerned. Let a woman love you, and she'll do anything, no matter how it hurts—herself. But not you—not the man she loves and wants to respect, Charley."
"But—me? I am not good enough for you!"
"Oh, boy! How sweet that sounds to me! Say it over again to me! You make me think I might some day be worth a man's love. It's got away from us now. It's all too late. Everything's too late. When he—Mr. Rawn—comes back, we've got to tell him. I've done what I was set to do—but not the way he thought, not the way any of us thought!"
IX
"Yes, he must know!" Halsey nodded. He held her hand now in his own. They swept on, as upon some vast wave, helpless, clinging to each other, he doing what he could to save her.