He had spoken with immense fervor, consuming her the while with his eyes, and wrenching the hand he held until it must have ached in every bone. She, again as pale as death, had trembled under his fierce, hot utterance, like a reed in the wind. But now that he had done, she seemed to recover herself. She withdrew her hand from his, and moved her chair away.
“Mr. Ripley,” she began, “you must not speak to me like this. It was not to hear you speak like this that I wished to see you to-day. You make it very hard for me to say what I have to say—what it was hard enough to say, at the best. But I must say it, and you must listen and understand. You have not understood yet. Now, please try to.”
She pressed her hand to her throat, and swallowed convulsively. It was evident that she was nerving herself to the performance of a most painful task. Finally she went on, “I have told you frankly that I understood the other day—understood what you meant when you looked at me that way. After you were gone, I thought it all over—all that I had learned. I thought at first that the only thing for me to do would be never to see you again—to refuse to receive you when you called—to avoid you as much as I possibly could. That, I thought, would be the best thing to do. But then I thought further about it, and then it seemed that that would not be right. To break off in that sudden way with you, and not to explain it, would be wrong and cruel. So I put aside that first thought, and said, ’No, I will not refuse to receive him. I will receive him just as before. Only I will act in such a manner toward him that he will not say any thing about caring for me. I will act so as to prevent him from saying any thing about that. Then we will go on and be friends the same as ever.’ But by and by that did not seem right either. It would be as cruel as the other, because, if you really did care for me, it would be a long suspense, a long agony for you; and perhaps, if nothing were said about it, you might get to caring still more for me, and might allow yourself to cherish false hopes, hopes that could never come true. So I decided that this course was as far from right as the first one. And, besides, I distrusted my own power—my power to keep you from speaking. It would be a long, long battle. I doubted whether I should have the strength to carry it through—always to be on my guard, and prevent you from speaking. ’No,’ I said, ’it is bound to come. Sooner or later, if we go on seeing each other, he will surely speak. Is it not better that I should let him know at once—what waiting will make harder for him to hear and for me to tell him—that I can never become his wife? Then, when he knows that he has made a mistake in caring for me, then he will go away, and think of other things, and see other women, and perhaps, by and by, get over it, and forget about me.’ I knew that if I told you that it was impossible for us to get married, and why it was impossible, I knew that you would give up hoping; and I thought that this course was the best of all. It was very hard. I shrank from the idea of speaking to you as I have done. Your good opinion is very precious to me. It was hard to persuade myself to say things to you that would, perhaps, make you think differently of me. But I felt that it was best. I had no right to procrastinate—to let you go on caring for me, and hoping for what could never be. Then I decided that I would see you and tell you about it right away.”
She paused and breathed deeply; but before Arthur had had time to put in a word, she resumed: “I do not believe that you have meant to make it more difficult for me to-day than it had to be; but it has pained me very much to hear you speak as you have spoken. You have not understood; but now you understand—must understand. I never can be your wife. You must try to get over caring for me. You must go away, now that I have explained, and never come any more.”
She had said all this in a low tone, though each syllable had been fraught with earnestness, and had manifestly cost an effort. Arthur, during the last few sentences, had been pacing up and down the room. Now he came to a standstill before her.
“And do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that that is your last word, your ultimatum? Do you mean to say that you will send me away—banish me from your presence—forbid me the happiness of seeing you and hearing you—all for a mere paltry nothing? If there were a real impediment to our marriage, I should be the first to acknowledge it, to bow before it. But this thing that you have mentioned—this—well, call it a secret, if you will—is this empty memory to rise up as a barrier between your life and mine? Oh, no, no! You have spoken of cruelty—you have wished not to be cruel. And yet this utmost cruelty you seem willing to perpetrate in cold blood. Stop, think, reflect upon what you are doing! Have you not seen how much I love you? how my whole life is in my love of you? Do you not know that what you propose to do—to send me away, all on account of this miserable secret—is to break my life forever? is to put out the light forever from my sky, and turn my world to a waste of dust and ashes? Can you—you who recoil from cruelty—be as wantonly cruel as this? Have I not told you that I care nothing for your secret, that I shall never think of your secret, if you will only speak one word? Oh, it is not possible that you can deliberately break my heart, for a mere dead thing like that! If it were something actual, something substantial, something existing now and here, it would be different. Then I, too, should recognize the size and the weight of it. I should accept the inevitable, and resign myself as best I could. But a bygone, a thing that is past and done with, how can you let that stand between us? I can never resign myself to that. Can’t you imagine the torture of my position? To want a thing with all my soul, to know that there is no earthly reason why I should not have it, and yet to know that I can not have it—why, it is like being defeated by a soap bubble, a vapor. Of what use is all this talk? We are merely confusing each other, merely beating about the bush. I have told you what you did not expect to hear. You thought that I would be swerved from my purpose when you said that you had a secret. You thought I would go away, satisfied that it was best for us not to marry. But, you see, you did yourself an injustice. You did not guess the real depth of the love you had inspired. You see, I love you too much to care about the past. Confess that you did not consider this, when, you made up your mind to send me away. But this talk is of no use. All the talk in the world can not alter the way we stand. Here are the simple facts: I love you. I love you! I ask you to be my wife. I kneel down before you, and take your hand in mine, and beg of you not to spurn my love—not to be guided by a blind, deluded conscience—not to think of the past—but to think only of the present and the future—to think only of how much I love you—of how all the happiness of my life is now at stake, for you to make or to destroy. I ask you to be merciful. I ask you to look into your heart, and let that prompt you how to act. If there is one atom of love for me in it—you—”
He broke off sharply; drew a quick, hard breath. Something—a sudden, furtive gleam far down in her eyes—a swift coming and going of color to and from her cheek—caused his heart to throb with an exultant thrill, that for an instant deprived him of the power of speech. Then, all at once, “Oh, my God! You do love me. You do love me!” he cried. He caught her in his arms, and strained her rapturously to his breast.
For a moment she did not resist. Her face lay for a moment buried upon his shoulder. It was a supreme moment of silence. Then she broke away. There were tears in her eyes. She sobbed out, “It is wrong, all wrong.”
But Arthur knew that he had gained the day. Her first sign of weakness was his assurance of success. Protest now as she might, she could no longer hide her love from him. And if she loved him, what had he to fear? There was much further talk between them. She tried to regain the ground she had lost. Failing in this, she wept, and spoke of the wrong she had done him, and said that she had forfeited her self-respect. But Arthur summoned all his eloquence to induce her to look at the matter through his eyes, and in the end—Somewhat later an eavesdropper outside the parlor door might have caught the following dialogue passing within:
Ruth’s voice: “It is strange, Arthur, but a little while ago it seemed to me that I could never tell that—that thing—I spoke about, to any living soul; yet now—now I feel quite otherwise. I feel as though I could tell it to you. I want to tell it to you. It is only right that I should tell you every thing about my life. It is a long story; shall I begin?”