“But you disappeared. No doubt he thought you were indisposed—”
“I wanted him to come after me, for once.”
“Oh, my dear, men are so dense. When they love us desperately they rarely do what we most long to have them. If I don’t sympathize with you—well, I think of my own throes, not only at your age, but so often after. It is so easy to fall in love, so difficult to remain there. You can marry Over if you wish—and two or three years hence—the pity of it!”
“Do you mean that no love lasts?”
“In tenacious natures like yours it may. Nevertheless, there will be times when he will bore you, get on your nerves, when you will plan to get away from him for a time. A few years ago I still clung—in the face of experience—to my delusions. Then I would have held your hand and wept sympathetic tears. Now, I can only say, go in and win, but don’t break your heart over an imagined capacity for love at an interminable high pitch.”
“You must have loved Mr. Rothe when you married him,” said Catalina, with curiosity, and feeling that Mrs. Rothe had opened the gates and bade her enter.
“I did,” said the older woman, dryly. “For what other reason, pray, would I make a fool of myself, and disgust and antagonize those whom I had loved so long? What a fool the world is!” she burst out. “And writers, for that matter! They are always harping on the death of the man’s love, upon the punishment that will be visited upon the woman of mature years who marries a man younger than herself! I am capable of the profoundest feeling, and I have never been able really to love a man in my life. I have deluded myself again and again, and invariably the man has disappointed or disgusted me. This is my third husband. The first died, but not soon enough to leave me with a blessed memory. The second, whom I had found irresistible, developed into a gourmand with a bad temper. I lived with him for fifteen years. When I met Rothe I was forty, the beginning of the most critical period in the life of women of my sort—when if not happy we would stake our souls for happiness. It seemed to me that I could not continue to live without love, and yet that I could not die unless I had, if only for a day, loved to the full capacity of my nature. When I met Rothe and he fell head over heels in love with me—I was a very handsome woman five years ago—I was at first flattered; then his ardor struck fire in me and I made no effort to extinguish it. It was what I had waited for, prayed for, and I encouraged it, fanned the flame. I was convinced that it was the grand passion at last; and I went out to Dakota. I gloried in the sacrifice, gloated over it. And in spite of divorce and scandal I suppose I was happy for a time.”
“And now?” asked Catalina, breathlessly. She had forgotten Over and Miss Holmes. Never had she been so close to living tragedy. Mrs. Rothe, in her negligée of pale yellow silk and much lace, her ruffled petticoat and slippers of the same shade, indescribably fresh and dainty, and, in the light of the solitary candle, a beautiful woman once more, was to Catalina the very embodiment of “the world,” and for the moment far more interesting than herself.
“Now! I hate the sight of him. I am bored beyond the power of words to tell. I have to remind myself that he is not my son, and when I do not long for my own son, who was far brighter, I long for a man of my own age to exchange ideas with, who will understand me in a degree. There are a few women with eternal youth in their souls, but I am not one of them. I am tired of all his little habits; the very expression of his face when he smokes a cigarette with his after-dinner coffee gets on my nerves. I am sick of making-up and pretending to be interested in the things that interest a young man. I want to be frankly myself—of course, I should hate growing old in any case, but I am sick of being a slave—that is what it amounts to when you don’t dare to be yourself. But I must keep up the farce lest I lose him, and the world laugh and once more remind itself of its perspicacity. I give him a long rope; he is still fond of me; my pride mounts as everything else fades away. There you are!”
Catalina had hardly drawn breath during this jeremiade. She no longer had any desire to run from her own pain. After all, what had Over done but take a walk with a strange girl in her own absence? She had beaten a mole-hill as high as a mountain. But she could think of nothing to say. In the bitter misery before her there was the accent of finality, and comment would have been resented if heard.