"It wouldn't be like you to, my dear; it wouldn't be you, my Hugh.... But even then I loved the memory of you.... You don't know what you have meant in my life, Hugh. Always, always you have stood for all that was fine and strong and good and generous—my gentlest man, my knight sans peur et sans reproche.... No other man I ever knew—no, let me say it!—ever measured up to the standard you had set for me to worship. But, Hugh—you'll understand, won't you?—about the others—?"
"Please," he begged—"please don't harrow yourself so, Mary!"
"No; I must tell you.... The world seemed so empty and so lonely, Hugh: my Galahad gone, never to return to me.... I tried to lose myself in my work, but it wasn't enough. And those others came, beseeching me, and—and I liked them. There was none like you, but they were all good men of their kind, and I liked them. They made love to me and—I was starving for affection, Hugh. I was made to love and to be loved. Each time I thought to myself: 'Surely this time it is true; now at last am I come into my kingdom. It can't fulfil my dreams, for I have known the bravest man, but'—"
Her voice broke and fell. Her eyes grew dull and vacant; her vision passed through and beyond him, as if he had not been there; the bitter desolation of all the widowed generations clouded her golden face. Her lips barely moved, almost inaudibly enunciating the words that were shaken from her as if by some occult force, ruthless and inexorable:
"Each time, Hugh, it was the same. One by one they were taken from me, strangely, terribly.... Poor Tom Custer, first; he was a dear boy, but I didn't love him and couldn't marry him. I had to tell him so. He killed himself.... Then Billy Hamilton; I became engaged to him; but he was taken mysteriously from a crowded ship in mid-ocean.... A man named Mitchell Thurston loved me. I liked him; perhaps I might have consented to marry him. He was assassinated—shot down like a mad dog in broad daylight—no one ever knew by whom, or why. He hadn't an enemy in the world we knew of.... And now Drummond...!"
"Mary, Mary!" he pleaded. "Don't—don't—those things were all accidents—"
She paid him no heed. She didn't seem to hear. He tried to take her hand, with a man's dull, witless notion of the way to comfort a distraught woman; but she snatched it from his touch.
"And now"—her voice pealed out like a great bell tolling over the magnificent solitude of the forsaken island—"and now I have it to live through once again: the wonder and terror and beauty of love, the agony and passion of having you torn from me!... Hugh!... I don't believe I can endure it again. I can't bear this exquisite torture. I'm afraid I shall go mad!... Unless ... unless"—her voice shuddered—"I have the strength, the strength to—"
"Good God!" he cried in desperation. "You must not go on like this! Mary! Listen to me!"
This time he succeeded in imprisoning her hand. "Mary," he said gently, drawing closer to her, "listen to me; understand what I say. I love you; I am your husband; nothing can possibly come between us. All these other things can be explained. Don't let yourself think for another instant—"