“What is there to say?”
She clasped her hands in her lap and looked up at him. Gregory sighed and set his teeth. She looked surpassingly lovely and rather helpless—women, at their best, always seemed to him pathetic.
“Gregory,” she said, “you don’t doubt that I love you?”
“No. But what is the use? Do you suppose I am going to make you my mistress—all Montana would know it in less than no time. I’m no saint, but it wouldn’t work—not for us!”
“But you want me?”
“Oh!” He turned away, then swung round upon her. She had stood up. Her head was bent forward. “You should help me out!” he cried angrily. “Can’t you see—it’s you I’m thinking of. Do you suppose I want all the sporting women in Butte making horrible jokes about you—all your friends cutting you? What’s a man good for if he doesn’t protect a woman?”
“Love affairs have lasted for years without being found out.”
“Precious seldom. And we are not buried in a big city. I must live out here and you would either have to live out here too, or I should be sneaking into your house in Butte. A business-like intrigue! Remember I lived somewhat before I married. Sentiment and romance soon evaporate——”
“Oh, yes, that is always what I have thought when I have read the American novelists’ attempts to portray what they call a ‘guilty love’. The only word that expresses it delicately is liaison, and the setting should be foreign as well. There is no background here. We are still under the drab shadow of Puritanism. I have heard it estimated that twenty-five thousand American women go abroad every year to indulge in a fleeting liaison that gives them courage to endure the desperately material and commonplace life of this country for another year. You don’t understand that because you never have been in Europe. But Egypt—Italy—in Southern Europe anywhere—with its unbridled beauties of nature and its far more poetic beauties that centuries of art have given it—and a thousand years of love behind us—Oh, cannot you imagine how wonderful love would be? Do you think I should ever want to come back?”
Gregory was staring at her. “Do you mean,” he stammered, “that you would sacrifice your reputation openly—your future—do you care enough for that?”