“Go with you—go with you?” She repeated the words mechanically, as though the thought suggested by them had not yet found a place in her mind. “How could I?”
“Why not?” His voice became suddenly intense, trembling with feeling. “I love you, and I want you, always, close by my side. I cannot think of going on, all the years of my life, without you. I know how wrong, how disloyal it all must seem to you, but I cannot help it. I love you—I love you—what more is there for me to say? If you wish it, I will go away from you at once—to-day, and never see you again, if it breaks my heart. Shall I?”
She gave a faint cry. The thought hurt her, in its unexpected cruelty. “How can you ask me that?”
The car was running very slowly now, along a stretch of road bordered by high trees, faintly green in their early spring garb. He let the machine come to a standstill beside the road and took her fiercely into his arms. “Edith, I cannot go without you—my God—I cannot. Come with me, dearest, come, and forget all the troubles and cares of your life here.” He pressed her to him with quivering muscles and kissed her. “Will you? Will you?” he demanded, and his voice seemed to her a command, rather than a question.
She yielded to his embrace gladly, with a joyous sense of freedom. “Yes—yes!” she cried, and lay still in his arms.
Presently they heard, far behind them, the sound of another car ascending the hill. West put her from him, started the machine, and they rushed along against the southeast wind, their hearts big with their new-formed plan.
Then a long silence came upon them. Perhaps they were both thinking of the pain which their love must cause to Donald, the inevitable consequences which must flow from it. It was a natural reaction from the exaltation of the moment before. Edith, too, was thinking of Bobbie, and already in her inmost soul had begun to resent the demands of this new emotion, which required her to tear out of her heart all that now lay within it, that there might be room for her love for West alone. Yet so strange are the ways of love, that, while resenting the result, she did not resent the love which caused it—to her Billy West was, for the time being at least, the sum of all earthly existence.
It was after one o’clock when they reached the hotel at Garden City, and in a few moments they had secured a table and were ordering luncheon. West suggested a cocktail, which seemed very grateful after the long ride. Edith did not feel hungry, but ate mechanically, hardly knowing what was set before her. She looked timidly at him, and felt her cheeks redden with a sudden flush. Somehow he seemed so big, so masterful, so different from Donald, and she knew that whenever he desired, from now on, to take her in his strong arms, she would not resist him, but would be glad. She seemed to feel toward him an intense physical attraction, something that she had never felt toward her husband, an unreasoning instinct, that made her long to be near him, to hear his voice, to put her hand in his, and forget everything else in the blessed knowledge that this man of her desire possessed her completely and utterly.
These thoughts came to her as an undercurrent, far below the ripple of conversation with which the meal passed. Only once did they look over the precipice upon the edge of which they walked so lightly. She ventured, half-afraid, to ask him when he thought of leaving New York. His answer showed that he, too, had been thinking deeply of the matter which lay nearest their hearts.
“I must go to Denver first,” he said. “All my property is there, you know, and I shall have to arrange about it.”