“You are not overjoyed.”
“There’s no reason why I should be glad. Why have you come?”
“You remember our last meeting five years ago. You were on your way to be married. Marriage is a beautiful thing, Houghton, when everything is right and square, and there’s love both sides. Well, everything was right and square with you and the woman you were going to marry; but there was not love both sides.”
While they had been talking thus, Houghton had, of purpose, led his companion far into the shade of the palms. He now wheeled upon Cayley, and said sternly: “I warn you to speak with less insolence; we had better talk simply.”
Cayley was perfectly cool. “We will talk simply. As I said, you had marriage without love. The woman loved another man. That other man loved the woman—that good woman. In youthful days at college he had married, neither wisely nor well, a beggar-maid without those virtues usually credited to beggar-maidens who marry gentlemen. Well, Houghton, the beggar-maid was supposed to have died. She hadn’t died; she had shammed. Meanwhile, between her death and her resurrection, the man came to love that good woman. And so, lines got crossed; things went wrong. Houghton, I loved Alice before she was your wife. I should have married her but for the beggar-maid.”
“You left her without telling her why.”
“I told her that things must end, and I went away.”
“Like a coward,” rejoined Houghton. “You should have told her all.”
“What difference has it made?” asked Cayley gloomily.
“My happiness and hers. If you had told her all, there had been an end of mystery. Mystery is dear to a woman’s heart. She was not different in that respect from others. You took the surest way to be remembered.”