He reviewed his scene with his father briefly, telling of his discovery of their infatuation, and of the still greater difficulties it implied for their future.
“What’s to become of us?” he asked.
“Yes, what is to become of us?” she repeated. “Our secret is no longer ours, and I, well, I don’t know how to hide it any longer.”
“Our secret is no longer ours,” he repeated bitterly, “and you, you have never yet been mine.”
She leaned her head on the young man’s breast and yielded purposefully to him, lulling him like a child, the wheedling tones of her voice striking on his heart strings like fingers on the keys of a piano.
“How dare you say I am not yours? When have I refused myself to you, you bad boy? Will you go away from here with me? I am all yours. But you are so young, and I shall be thirty very soon. Thirty years, and my love, which is my whole life, began only a few months ago. I looked at you, and there was sunlight on you, and I crept out of the shadows to be with you. One day I’ll tell you about my childhood, my youth and marriage, and I shall tell it so as to see your tears.”
“Edith!”
“Ah, yes! People who find marriage the gate to light and gladness, and not the door to a prison, have a fine time of it scorning our frailty. When fate overtakes them, too, do they get any more than we deserve? But they don’t ever ask themselves that question. Happiness is due them as a matter of course. They don’t even do anything to protect it, and if they happen to lose it, they call it just their bad luck, anybody’s fault but their own.”
“Edith! I love you, and you’re not happy.”
She half raised herself, and took his face in her hands, with an adoring gesture.