They sat down against two redwoods, facing each other.
“Very well,” said Clive, “I have been a scoundrel and nothing I can say is the least excuse. I can only state the facts.... The average girl who is an avowed flirt expects to be made love to, and a man finds it no task to do what a charming woman exacts of him.... I took you in the beginning for a spoilt beauty, a coquette, above the average as far as brain was concerned, but still suggesting little more than an unusually spirited flirtation. Of course, I was far more fascinated than I realized or I should not have come to your house, nor should I have asked you to give me these two weeks.... That it might mean life or death to either of us I did not realize until that day among the ferns.”
The fight was on. Helena threw back her head. “Can you not explain to Mary Gordon? Surely she would release you.”
“I never could explain to Mary Gordon. She would comprehend that after four years I had thrown her over for a prettier woman whom I had known two weeks. Women like that—simple, good, loyal women—don’t reason and analyze as a clever woman does. And the hurt lasts—not because the man is worth it, any more than any man is good enough for such women—but because they are what they are.”
“But she was not the woman for you; therefore she would find another man.”
“She would live on an isolated ranch in Southern California for several years, then go back to England and live in her old home, among the people she has known all her life. Those women don’t seek distraction. They are the slaves of an idea. If the right man did come she wouldn’t know it.”
“All of which means that you think it your duty to marry her.”
“I mean to marry her. There is nothing else to be done. If there were no other reason I have no right to make her ridiculous.”
Helena caught her breath. For the first time she mentally appreciated the strength in the man which had captivated her woman’s instincts. But she did not lose courage.
“And I am not to be considered at all? I say nothing about being made ridiculous. If I am it is my own fault, and I don’t care, anyhow; that seems to me a very insignificant matter. Now that I have found you am I to be left alone—thirty, forty years? You know that I have about equal possibilities of good and bad in me. If I married you I could become as wholly good as any mortal can. I never realized what possibilities there are in any of us as I did in the last few days before you went away. The principal reason that I love you is because I always feel that there is something in you to climb to and that you could lift me up to you. If you leave me I’ll become a bad woman. Why not? It must be very interesting, and I have nothing more in life to look forward to. If I lived with you I might grow into your belief; you could carry me anywhere; but alone I cannot. Moreover, I want to live in this life. I cannot sit down and wait patiently for a mythical and unsubstantial hereafter. I am too much of a savage, I suppose, but at all events, I can’t.”