“It was Lydia, Melwin,” cried Margaret, her fingers wandering stumblingly along the low neck of the gown; “she asked me to do it. She thought it would please you. She thought it would remind you of the way she used to look.”
“She told you?” A softer expression came to his face. The hard lines fell away; the weary ghost of an unborn smile hovered on his lips, trembling and pathetic.
“Don’t care! Please, please don’t look so! I didn’t think! I will go away at once and take the dress off.”
He laid his arms upon the back of a chair and dropped his head upon them. “Don’t mind me, child,” he said brokenly; “you couldn’t help it. You didn’t understand. When a man’s flesh has been bruised with pincers, when his sinews have been wrenched and dragged as mine have, he does not take kindly to the rack. You could have wrung my heart out of my body to-night with your hands, and it would not have hurt so much.”
“I am so sorry!” Margaret breathed, warm gushes of pity sweeping over her. “You could never guess how sorry I am!”
“I suppose,” he said more calmly, “that I have been a puzzle to you. You were too young to know me when I lived. I am only half alive now. Life has gone by and left me stranded. Look at that picture, child. That was Lydia—the Lydia of the best years of my life—the Lydia that I loved and won and married! Twelve years! How long ago it seems!”
Margaret had seated herself opposite him and leaned forward, her bare elbows on the table and her locked fingers against her cheek. “I—understand now.” Her voice was a strenuous whisper.
“You will know what that is some time—to feel one nearer than all the world—to tremble when her arm presses yours, to listen for the swish of her skirt, to turn hot and cold at the smell of her hair or the touch of her lips! She was beautiful—more beautiful to me than any woman I had ever seen, or ever shall see. She filled every corner of me! Life was complete. It had nothing left to give me. Can you think what that means? You know what happened then. It came crashing in upon my youth like a falling tower. Since then the years have gone by, but they stopped for me that day.”
An intenser look was in Margaret’s eyes. “But you have Lydia—you love her!”
He breathed sharply. “Have her!” he repeated. “I have her mind, her soul, the intellect that answered mine, the soul that leaned to my soul, but her—her—the body I held, the woman I caressed, the fragrant life I touched—where is it? Where? I love her!” he cried with abrupt passion. “I loved her then; I love her now. I have never loved another woman! I never think a thought that is not of her. My very dreams, my imagination are hers! I would rather die than love another woman!