“Coming back to you? And you call me by that name? Only my mother, Mr. Jefferson and Will Clark ever did so.”
“Oh, stiff-necked man! It is so hard to be kind with you! And all I have ever done—every time I have followed you in this way, each time I have humiliated myself thus—it always was only in kindness for you!”
He made no reply.
“Fate ran against us, Merne,” she went on tremblingly. “We have both accepted fate. But in a woman’s heart are many mansions. Is there none in a man’s—in yours—for me? Can’t I ask a place in a good man’s heart—an innocent, clean place? Oh, think not you have had all the unhappiness in your own heart! Is all the world’s misery yours? I don’t want you to go away, Merne, but if you do—if you must—won’t you come back? Oh, won’t you, Merne?”
Her voice was trembling, her hand half raised, her eyes sought after him. She stood partly in shadow, the flare of light from the open door falling over her face. She might have been some saint of old in pictured guise; but she was a woman, alive, beautiful, delectable, alluring—especially now, with this tone in her voice, this strangely beseeching look in her eyes.
Her hands were almost lifted to be held out to him. She stood almost inclined to him, wholly unconscious of her attitude, forgetting that her words were imploring, remembering only that he was going.
He seemed not to hear her voice as he stood there, but somewhere as if out of some savage past, a voice did speak to him, saying that when a man is sore athirst, then a man may drink—that the well-spring would not miss the draft, and would tell no tale of it!
He stood, as many another man has stood, and fought the fight many another man has fought—the fight between man the primitive and man the gentleman, chivalry contending with impulse, blood warring with breeding.
