Two days later she received a letter from him, in which he said that his wife was unalterably resolved to contest a divorce on any ground, and that the newspaper gossip had almost irretrievably injured his prospects. He added that he was as devoted to her as ever. He was, in fact, broken-hearted, but his clear duty to his family, his children and his career demanded that they should never meet again.
In spite of this note she made several attempts to see him once more. She confessed to Janet that she had been ready to accept any terms he might make, if only he agreed not to part from her forever. It was for love and not for marriage that she had sacrificed herself. It was not marriage but love that she demanded. But he sustained his pitilessly inflexible attitude. Almost prostrated by the notoriety which the experience had thrust upon her, she made a heart-broken return to the United States.
"I landed in New York without hope, without health, and without a home," said Cornelia, dramatically. "But I had vindicated my belief that love should be free."
To forestall a social boycott, she had proudly decided to shun all her former friends. To this end she rented a flat in the Lorillard tenements. And here she had remained in eclipse, and in receipt of a small allowance from a brother who was a leading politician in a Western State.
Latterly, old friends of hers, members of the fellowship of Outlaws, had drifted into her rooms in Kips Bay; and so she had been dragged—unwillingly, she alleged—from her retirement.
She asserted that she had no ill-will for Percival Houghton, who would always be the one man in the world for her. After all, he had sold his birthright for a marriage of convenience, and he might well feel that he ought to stick to his bargain, cost what it might. She was persuaded that his coldness to her in London was merely an iron vizor clamped upon his real feelings by the ruthless institution of matrimony. She also appeared to derive some comfort from the thought that though he was "a soul pirate," though he had "stolen her soul," his own had been damned in the process.
"Yet I shall always love him," she said, with tragic resignation. "I shall never love anyone else. And I shall never marry. I've suffered enough from marriage as it is."
The ferryboat docked at the Lackawanna Station. Janet, who had been lost in a reverie, mechanically followed her companion's suggestion that they take the same boat back. Cornelia's story—the vivid story of one of the principals—had a very different coloring from the account of the "affinity Houghton" scandal which had filled the front pages of the evening newspapers two years ago. Janet could still recollect the headlines, the pictures, and the expansive gossip; also the strange mixture of curiosity and pious disgust with which she had followed the reports.
Could the horrified Janet Barr of that dimly remembered time be the same girl who was now sitting in the closest intimacy beside the leading female in the case?
On the return across the river, Janet had several questions on the tip of her tongue, but Cornelia's manner seemed to discourage inquiries of a too personal kind. However, Janet did get in: