“Judith—God help me—the unattainable is ... you!”
V
Judith Ascott had dreamed of the time when love should come, not such love as Raoul had given her in her romantic girlhood. Nor that other love, that had marched with slow musical cadence into the discord of her early maturity. It must be the masterful love, austere and tender, a discipline and a refuge for her unruly spirit. And now it was come ... the only love that had ever mattered to her—the only man she had known whose very faults and weaknesses were precious, and she had but one impulse—to fold him in her arms and soothe his aching spirit. Was this love? Or mayhap the thwarted motherhood within her, that perceived in Lary and Eileen the void left by the rebellious aversion of the woman who was their mother in the flesh? A long moment she scrutinized, challenged the stranger that had arisen, unheralded and undesired, in her own heart. Then she said, resolutely:
“No, Lary. I am the unattainable, only so long as I retain the wisdom to hold myself beyond your reach. I should prove as disappointing as all the others—the achievements that were to give you joy. The real Judith is not the peerless being your imagination has fashioned. Would you shrink from me in repugnance and horror if I should tell you that my husband is not dead?”
“You are another man’s wife?”
“I was. The divorce was granted a few days before I came to Springdale, less than three months ago.”
Lary breathed a sigh so sharp that it cut him like a knife.
“But that isn’t all. There was another man ... a man I fancied I loved. Perhaps I pitied him. Most of all, I pitied myself. I was more than willing to listen to his arguments. We would go to some place where no one knew us. We had not the courage to brush away the falsehoods and conventions of society. I faced all the consequences. It was no impulse of youth. I was twenty-five, and had been married almost seven years. We both knew what we were doing when I told him I would go.”
All at once she felt the man at her side shrink—involuntarily, she was sure. It was as if his body had repulsed her, while his mind was striving to be just, even magnanimous. She had thought it all out, after Theodora’s revelation, knowing that some day Lary would come to her with the pure white offering of his love. And she had resolved to tell him of Herbert Faulkner—not the fiasco, but the fact of her elopement. Perhaps it was this submerged thought that had leaped to the surface, in her talk with Lary’s mother. With him she would not take refuge in the timely intervention of a broken axle and a prudent father. Her sin was as complete as if she had carried elopement to its inevitable conclusion. He must hear the story in all its sordid aspect. She waited for him to speak. The clear outline of his face cut the shadow, incisive and still as an Egyptian profile in stone. Not a quiver of the lips betrayed his emotion. Yet Judith Ascott knew she had dealt him the cruelest blow of his life.
“You won’t let it interfere with our friendship, Lary?” It was a stupid, girlish question, such as Eileen or Kitten Henderson might have asked. She felt incredibly young and inexperienced. When the man spoke, his voice was hoarse with pain.