“Julia!” exclaimed Tay, trying to get his breath.
She fell back limply against a tree, as if exhausted with her own passion, but neither voice nor eyes lost their power.
“Oh, go! Go! Go! If you don’t, I shall be in the dust. I shall be incapable of love in my abasement. I know myself. To love, to be happy, I must be free. I must have my self-respect. I can’t love, tortured by shame and remorse. I want love and you more than anything on earth, but I want them utterly. Oh, go!”
For a moment or two Tay had been conscious of an angry struggle in the depths of his mind. He suddenly became master of himself. He shot a glance at Julia as piercing as her own, and she gasped and flung herself face downward on the snow and began to sob. He made no attempt to pick her up for the moment.
“You have strange powers, Julia,” he said. “If I were weaker than I am,—and God knows I am weak enough,—I should be slinking through the woods with my tail between my legs, hypnotized out of my manhood, and ready to lick your hand for the rest of my life.” Julia stopped sobbing and listened intently. Tay walked up and down before he spoke again. “But mind you, I don’t question your sincerity, your love, whatever the devilish arts you tried to practise on me. Every leader of a great revolution is a fanatic and a Jesuit. And, methods aside, every word you spoke was sound common-sense. I don’t care to assume the responsibility of injuring those women, and I believe you would be incapable of happiness if you handed their enemies another weapon—a pretty deadly one it would be!”
He picked her up and dusted her off. “I am going,” he went on grimly, “and I shall wait exactly six months. Or rather—” He caught her hands in his powerful grip, his eyes blazing into hers. “I shall never see you again, not even with your royal consent, unless you swear to me here that you’ll not try that on again. That you’ll be woman to my man from this time forth—that and nothing more. I’ll be damned if I’ll live with a woman who doesn’t play a square game. Swear it.”
“Oh, I do, I do! Oh, Dan!” The tears were running down her face, honest tears, for she was frightened, while rejoicing. “Do believe that I was only doing my best—I knew that you wouldn’t listen—I had only one object —”
“Oh, as I told you, I have never questioned your queer complicated honesty. Only, being a perfectly normal person myself, I prefer to postpone occult trickery until I reach the next world. No doubt it will be all in the day’s work there. But I’ve got my job cut out in this, matching my earthly wits against the next man’s. Now, you’ve given me your word! If you ever go back on it —”
“Oh, never!” Julia was now really limp, and looked wholly feminine. Tay took her in his arms once more and dried her tears. “It’s my fate to love you,” he said, with a sigh. “And that’s about the size of it. I’m sorry you ever went to your East, but live in the hope I can make you forget it.”
“And do you love me as much as ever?” asked Julia, unintellectually.