“I want no go-betweens, particularly Mohammedan ghosts.”
But Julia had no intention of letting him down.
“I wonder I could remember him, or any one else! It was only because I suddenly realized what all this means—that I may have another and far greater part to play —”
“You see that at last! Perhaps I should have appealed to you before. But—it is only to-day that I have felt really close to you—really loved you, perhaps. I fancy I was merely infatuated before.” He took her in his arms, and she looked up at him with the deepest sympathy a woman can express, particularly when gifted with eyes that are the dazzling headlights of a finished and powerful machine behind. “Oh, if you could only know,” he continued in tones of intense feeling, “what it will mean to me to have you, not only to love, but to work with! I really want with all my soul to be of use to my country, to be one of the few that are willing to work for her unselfishly, to leave a decent name behind me. It is thankless work, fighting the majority, battling for an ideal nobody wants, to be the butt of the press, accused of sordid motives, balked at every turn. The only sort of patriotism the average American understands is sounding promises by ambitious politicians and huge donations from repentant millionnaires. To raise the morale of a people, and in the process prevent them from growing too rich, may mean the respect of posterity, but it also means the hatred of your contemporaries. The Big Voice! It confuses the mind and the standards. The constant failures, the recurring sense of hopelessness, of futility, the inevitable contempt for the masses you are striving to emancipate from themselves,—many a man that has started out with the loftiest and most selfless ideals loses courage, shrugs his shoulders, and falls back. I am no better and stronger than many of them. I have dreamed one minute, the next wondered how far I would go, how long my enthusiasm would last. Material success is easy enough, and always rewarded by approbation and respect! What is the use? I am young still, but I asked myself that question more than once, for even my family were all against me. My father was furious. He is honest, but his business has been his god. I left home and went to a hotel—to avoid the everlasting discussions at table. My old friends cut me on the street. I was regarded as an enemy of society, and society cast me out. The rest of our little group shared the same fate. We were obliged to keep one another’s courage up. That we carried our lives in our hands and were liable to assassination at any moment was the least of our trials. The Big Voice! We felt as if we were at the foot of an avalanche, or some other inexorable enemy in Nature herself, trying to push it back with our hands. Inevitably there were black moments when we felt we were fools, especially when we faced certain defeat. And it’s all to do again, not once, but many times. Do you wonder that the light side of my nature has given me many cynical moments, or that I have seethed with disgust, or wondered if I would last? But with you—ah! If I had ever dreamed you lived, I believe I never should have despaired for a moment. But my only memory of you was of a charming and lovely child. And it is only to-day, here, that I have realized what it means for any of us to stand alone. With your faith and your brain, with you always beside me, sympathizing, helping—I never shall lose courage for a moment. I could accomplish anything—everything —”
This sudden vehement disclosure of the serious depths of his nature under its surface gayety, with more than one glimpse of heights and powers she had barely divined, had thrilled Julia even more than his passionate love-making. All her own greatness responded, and for a moment or two she had been swept irresistibly on that tide of self-revealing words. She had a vision of the complete passion, the perfect union. But her brain remained cool. She never lost sight of her purpose.
She sprang from him suddenly and flung out her arms. Her eyes looked black. Her skin shone with a peculiar radiance like white fire. So she had looked more than once on the platform during her last moments of irresistible appeal; when her bewildered audiences had felt as if dissolving in a crucible from which there was no escape. “Oh,” she cried in low vibrating tones of intense passion, “now I know you—the real You! I’ll never fail you. You are wonderful, and I worship you! I believe we can be happier than any two mortals have ever been. But, Dan, I must go to you free, with a conscience as clean as your own. You must see that. You are too great not to see it. I must be tormented with no regrets, no remorse. If I should leave at this moment—‘rat’ like any scoundrelly selfish politician—desert these women publicly while all the world is watching them, make them ridiculous—oh, I don’t mean that I am indispensable; there are too many great women among them for that— But don’t you see that if I threw them over to follow an American to the other side of the world, now, while their fate hangs in the balance—why, it would amount to nothing less than a cynical declaration that we are all alike when it comes to a man—that we fight for a great impersonal cause only so long as no man comes along to play the old tune on our passions—why—Good God!—they would be the butt of every malicious wit in the kingdom. Their cause would be set back a generation. And I? I should be execrated by women the world over. I, who am now a sort of goddess. My immense following is due as much to the youth and beauty which I have appeared to immolate so indifferently, as to all my talents put together. What use should I be to you if I scuttled the ship and deserted it? What place could I take among the women of your country? Do you think they would listen to me, that I could teach them, help them? They would laugh in my face!”
She caught him by the shoulders, her eyes piercing into his, which stared at her full of sombre perplexity. She went on in a rapid monotonous voice, which fell on his brain like a rain of fire: “Why didn’t you come for me, as you promised? I should have gone. Four years ago! I was free. Something was always knocking at my mind. I knew that I had useful energies of some sort. They were always groping to find vent. If you had come, if you had told me then what you have told me to-day, I should not have hesitated a moment. I should have known that my work was to be done with you. But you forgot your promise. The bond was not strong enough. Why did you wait until I had become a public figure, written about daily—until I had hopelessly compromised myself? Oh, can’t you see that you have made me the most tragic figure among women? I love you so that I long with all those other and far greater forces within me—that you have brought to life—to go, to be happy, to give you all you want and deserve, to become truly great—with you! Oh, I am the most unhappy woman on earth—and the happiest!”
Tay had tried to interrupt her several times. But he was dazed. She looked like a sibyl. He felt disjointedly that he had less desire to claim her as a woman than to ascend with her to the plane whither she seemed to have borne herself. He had been shaken out of his own reserve and bared his soul for the first time in his life; his defences were down, she seemed to have entered his mind and taken possession. Human passion would appear to have fallen to ashes. His senses felt numb, he was vaguely conscious of a material dissolution that left his soul free to mingle with hers.
She gave him no chance to speak. Her words flowed on with the same fiery monotony.
“You have taught me what duty means. I believe I never was really capable of the sacrifice of self before. I worked to fill my time, to forget my depths. Then because the greatness of that work really put my womanhood to sleep! But you! I have not a personal ambition left, not a want apart from you, but this terrible duty. I want to live in you, for you. You! You! You!” Tay had a confused idea that he was turning into a demi-god. “But I must go to you free—that I may never look back—that I may know and give complete happiness. I must be all woman, not a mere brain, humiliated, ashamed, tortured by regrets. And you must go at once, at once, at once. If you stay, if you prove too strong for me, if you force me to go with you—and I love you so I might go—then we never shall know the meaning of happiness for a moment. I will follow you before long. If we don’t win the battle early this year, I will train some one to take my place. I shall speak, appear in public less and less, drop out by degrees. I shall soon be forgotten—long before I can marry you. But to leap from the front rank of these women straight into a divorce court in a city whose name is a synonym for vulgarity, that is never mentioned without a laugh or a sneer— Oh, you see! You see! What an anticlimax to all these years on a pedestal! What a wife for you, a public man! Oh, God! I should be the ruin of your own career —”