Through One Administration

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"Well, much as I indulged myself then I knew where I must stop, and I never really forgot that I was going to stop at a certain point. I said that I would be happy just so long as he was there, and that when we parted that would be the end of it. I even laid out my plans, and the night before he was to go away—in the evening, after the long, beautiful day was over—I said things to him which I meant should make him distrust me. The shallowest man on earth will hate you if you make him think you are shallow, and capable of trifling as he does himself. The less a man intends to remember you the more he intends you shall remember him. It will be his religious belief that women should be true,—some one should be true, you know, and it is easier to let it be the woman. What I tried to suggest that night was that my treatment of him had only been a caprice,—that what he had seen of me in Washington had been the real side of my life, and that he would see it again and need not be surprised."

"O Bertha!" her friend cried. "O Bertha!"

And she threw both arms about her with an intensely feminine swiftness and expressiveness.

"Yes," said Bertha, "it was not easy. I never tried anything quite so difficult before, and perhaps I did not do it well, for—he would not believe me."

There was quite a long pause, in which she leaned against Agnes, breathing quickly.

"I think that is really the end," she said at last. "It seems rather abrupt, but there is very little more. He is a great deal stronger than I am, and he is too true himself to believe lies at the first telling. One must tell them to him obstinately and often. I shall have to be persistent and consistent too."

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Agnes. "What are you thinking of doing?"

"There will be a great deal to be done," she answered,—"a great deal. There is only one thing which will make him throw me aside"—

"Throw you aside—you?"

"Yes. I have always been very proud,—it was the worst of my faults that I was so deadly proud,—but I want him to throw me aside—me! Surely one could not care for a man when he was tired and did not want one any more. That must end it. And there is something else. I don't know—I am not sure—I could not trust myself—but there have been times when I thought that he was beginning to care too—whether he knew it or not. I don't judge him by the other men I have known, but sometimes there was such a look in his eyes that it made me tremble with fear and joy. And he shall not spoil his life for me. It would be a poor thing that he should give all he might give—to Bertha Amory. He had better give it to—to you, Agnes," she said, with a little tightening grasp.