She hesitated, just as if she did not know what she ought to say to me, and I could not blame her for feeling pretty uncertain. She looked at me with a sort of kindly and tolerant expression—but, good heavens, there wasn’t any love in her eyes! I had found out what love-light was like when Kama Holstrom kneeled beside my bed that afternoon!
As I have confessed and have shown, I was pretty much of a blunderer in affairs with women. But do me this credit in your estimate: I had not come into the presence of Celene Kingsley that day harboring any more illusions as to how I stood with her. I was awake! Think back with me! Never had she given me a word of affection. Rather, her tolerance of me had been plainly inspired by her zeal in her father’s behalf. After that piece of brazen idiocy of mine, when I had taken her in my arms, she had been careful to keep out of my reach. Allow me to say that I had been doing some swift and coherent thinking on my way from the tavern.
In my soul was the shamed consciousness that I had been making a real thing out of a dream—and had been babbling unwarrantably. I was a pitiful object as I stood there between them—I deserved punishment at the hands of both of them. For I had made free with Celene Kingsley’s name and had misdirected Kama Holstrom’s devoted obedience to a promise.
I say, I knew with all my heart and being that I had never struck a spark of real love from the condescending nature of Judge Kingsley’s daughter; I knew that I loved Kama Holstrom with all the tender devotion one pours forth to the true mate.
Yet I dared not say a word lest I should appear as an atrocious cad seeking release from the old love before taking on the new.
Equally did Celene Kingsley’s high-bred delicacy restrain her tongue; I understood that she did not want to betray me as a mere cheeky boaster.
So we stood there looking at one another, three as unhappy specimens of humanity as there were in Levant that day.
“I am too much of a fool to know what to say and how to say it,” I blurted, and the tears ran down my cheeks.
It was Celene who stepped into the breach; she wasn’t in love, and she was cooler than the other two in the party.
She walked up to Kama and took her hands in caressing grasp.