"I don't know how to tell him," she wailed. "There was something Pagan in me and I didn't know it. I thought I was in hand, but I wasn't! I started low, and I wanted to climb up—and up—and up! Oh, Charley, look!" She leaned toward him across the table, pleading. "I was just ambitions, just like any American girl—like every woman in the world, I suppose. If I sold out, I didn't know it. I didn't want you to care for me. But you did, you do! I kept away from you, so that you wouldn't, so that we couldn't—so that I'd always feel that you, at least—"
"Where can it end?" he asked quietly.
"I don't care where it ends, that's the worst of it; I don't care! One thing only is to my credit. I've kept my bargain—with him. I've paid the price I agreed to give. There is no scandal about me—yet. And there might have been!"
"Yes."
"But some way, when he sent me out for you, talked to me as he did, treated me like a piece of merchandise as he did—for once I wavered. For once, Charley, it seemed to me that I was released from all obligations to him, that I was where I ought to have a chance for my own hand, to see life as life could be for itself, to have the love that's life for a woman. I wanted to be wooed and won by some one who loved me, just as any woman wants to be, Charley, some time! And I wasn't—I wasn't.... It was horrible.... It was horrible.... I wanted to give love for love. I wanted what I couldn't get, and saw it was too late to get it fair. And when I saw that you—that even you'd sell out for me—why, where was the good, clean thing left in all the world? I couldn't tell. I didn't know what to do. I don't know now. But you put these papers before me now, and you expect me to shed tears over them. I can't. I don't care. The worst was over for me before now. It came when I knew you'd love me if I'd raise a finger to you. Why didn't you make me love you first—long ago? Then all would have come right. Back there—at first—"
"They'll say that when your husband lost his fortune he lost his wife. Yes—" he nodded. "They'll say that and believe it! That isn't true!"
"No, that isn't true. I was done with him the moment he set this errand for me. No woman can love a man who will do that. But I was done with him—from the first I never loved him, I never did—I only married him! I sold out—what I had to sell, myself, my fitness for a place like this. That was what I called success! I wanted to be some one in the world! Look at me now—"
X
They sat, two figures in an inexorable drama that swept relentlessly forward; tasting of a part of ambition's ripened fruit; yet hungering with the vast, pitiful, merciless human hunger for that other fruit that hung in a garden once not lost.
"If it costs my soul, I'll stand by you," he said at last; and he reached out a hand to her suddenly.