"What was your idea in forcing a meaningless marriage?"
"I loved her. I knew that it was the only way. Madly as I loved her, I knew that Molly was weak as water. I could not, would not, run the risk of letting her leave me without the legal tie. But I justified it to myself—I could have justified anything, I fear! I vowed a vow that she would be repaid for the waiting as never woman yet was paid. She wept on my shoulder and said, 'And you really do love me, Harry—and you'll swear mother need never know?'
"I swore it. There were to be no letters. Molly was too terrified to write and still more terrified of receiving a letter. She would live in constant dread, she said, if there were a possibility of such a thing. Weak in everything else she was adamant in this.
"I went back to work. I worked with the strength of ten. Health, comfort, pleasure, all were subordinated to the fever of work. I hoped that I might steal a glimpse of her sometimes. She promised to try to return to Toronto. But my letter must have alarmed the mother. I found out, indirectly, that shortly after her return, Mrs. Weston whisked her off to Europe. They were gone a year. When they returned I was in the far west with a government surveying party, earning something to help me with my last year's college expenses. When I was again in Toronto she had vanished. Gone, as I afterward learned, to stay with an aunt in California. Her mother, alive to danger, was not going to risk a meeting, and my vow to Molly left me helpless. But how I worked!
"That last year things began to come my way. Adela married a fine young fellow, wealthy and generous. My mother went to live with them in their western home, Calgary, where they still are. Then Thomas Callandar, my mother's brother, who had never bothered about any of us living, died, and left me a handsome property, adding, as you already know, the condition that I take the family name. You remember that my father's name, the name under which I married Molly, was Chedridge.
"Nothing now held me from Molly—in another month I would have my degree, and free and rich I could go to claim her. It seemed like a fairy tale! In my great happiness I broke my promise and wrote to her, to the California address, hoping to catch her there. In three weeks' time the letter came back from the dead letter office. I wrote again, this time to the Cleveland address, a short note only, telling her I was free at last. Then, next day, I followed the letter to Cleveland, wealth in one hand, the assurance of an honourable degree in the other.
"I had no trouble in finding the house. It was one of a row of houses, nondescript but comfortable, in a pleasant street. It seemed familiar—I had seen Molly's snapshots of it often. I cannot tell you what it felt like to be really there—to walk down the street, up the path, up the steps to the veranda. I was trembling as with ague, I was chalk-white I knew—was I not in another moment to see my wife!
"I could hear the electric bell tingle somewhere inside. Then an awful pause. What if they were not at home? What if they lived there no longer? I knew with a pang of fear that I could not bear another disappointment.
"There was a sound in the hall, the door knob moved—the door opened. I gasped in the greatness of my relief for the face in the opening was undoubtedly the face of Molly's mother. They were at home. They must have had my letter—they must be expecting me—
"Something in the woman's face daunted me. It was deathly and strained. Surely she did not intend to continue her opposition? Yet it confused me. I forgot all that I had intended to say, I stammered: