I don't suppose it's in particularly good taste for me to talk to you of your wife in this fashion; but it's my dying speech, old man, as far as this subject is concerned, and I 'm talking to you and to no one else.
There's just one thing more I want to say. I don't want either you or Marjory to think I'm going out of your lives a martyr—that I'm going off to pine and die. The first time she left me I made an ass of myself, and that was because I had not then got hold of the essential fact of love. As I see it now, love—real love—does not lie in the personal gratification of selfish desires. The wanting is only the first stage. Perhaps it is a ruse of Nature to entice men to the second stage, which is giving.
Until recently my whole thought was centered on getting. I was thinking of myself alone. It was baffled desire and injured vanity that led me to do what I did before, and I was justly punished. It was when I began to think less about myself and more about her that I was reprieved. I'm leaving her now with but one desire: to do for her whatever I may, at any time and in any place, to make her happy; and, because of her, to do the same for any others with whom for the rest of my life I may be thrown in contact. Thus I may be of some use and find peace.
I'm going away, Covington. That will leave her here alone. Wherever you are, there must be trains back to Nice—starting perhaps within the hour.
So long.
PETER J. NOYES.
CHAPTER XXVI
FREEDOM
With the departure of Peter and his sister—Peter had made his leave-taking easy by securing an earlier train than she had expected and sending her a brief note of farewell—Marjory found herself near that ideal state of perfect freedom she had craved. There was now no outside influence to check her movements. If she remained where she was, there was no one to interrupt her in the solitary pursuit of her own pleasure. Safe from any possibility of intrusion, she was at liberty to remain in the seclusion of her room; but, if she preferred, she could walk the quay without the slightest prospect in the world of being forced to recognize the friendly greeting of any one.