“I used it wrong, you mean,” he said. “It was a silly word to use. I intended feeble-mindedness and should have said it.”
“You are laughing. You are making fun!”
“Not at all. But I’m not crying.”
“And you will recommend me? In spite of the spelling and all? But—but eighteen dollars a week won’t be enough. If I don’t live at Green Doors, if I go right away, I must have more than that. I’m not worth it, I know, but I must have it.”
“I don’t agree with you there. You could manage well enough. But we needn’t go into that now. There’s loads of time. We’ll work the whole thing out together. You and I. When you are quiet and rested. Once we face the whole situation squarely and intelligently, the next steps will come clear. But you must go home now and rest. That’s what I called you in for, to tell you I wouldn’t need you this afternoon.”
“Has Neil called up? I’d better wait for that.”
“The telephone hasn’t rung since I came in.” Lewis took out his cigarette case again and this time lit a cigarette. “Drink that water, Petra,” he said. “You know, I thought you were going to have hysterics here a minute ago. Congratulations that you didn’t. You had cause enough. But now I want to tell you something. About Neil—. He can’t help you disentangle yourself from this Green Doors spider web. Or if he does, it will only be for you and him another web that you’ll start spinning together with the same disastrous cruelty to lives. It doesn’t matter what you two are to each other. It doesn’t matter what has happened between you. If you want really to be free of Green Doors—of what Green Doors stands for in your life—you’ve got to do it alone. Neil can’t help you.”
Petra had dropped her head into her hands again, when he assured her that the telephone had not rung since he came in; but he thought she was listening. He went on, anyway, speaking gently and with a kind of brittle clearness. “Neil is married, Petra. Married. Just as long as Edyth Dayton lives, he is married. No matter how devotedly he loves another woman, Edyth will remain, in his deepest consciousness, his wife.... Didn’t you know that, Petra?”
Lewis had never been farther from thinking of his own interests. For the moment he, Lewis Pryne, existed only to save this girl from calamity. He knew now that his yesterday’s intention of asking Petra to be his wife, no matter if she did love Neil, had been mad and wrong. A heart like Petra’s—so passionate and whole—must break or be reborn; it could never be patched up and used again, like a broken vase.
“Didn’t you know that, Petra,” he repeated, when the silence grew too painful. “Didn’t you know that Neil will consider himself married, no matter how good a divorce his wife brings home from Switzerland?”