June was silent a moment. Then she said in a very low voice, almost as though speaking to herself:
“I wonder if—if you ever loved me.”
He wheeled round, and the desperate misery in his eyes hurt her almost physically.
“Yes,” he said harshly. “I did love you. In a way, I do now. But it’s nothing—nothing to the madness in my blood! I’m a brute to leave you. But I’m going to do it. No civilised country can hold me now!”
So that was to be the end of it! June recognised the bitter truth at last. Magda had indeed robbed her of everything she possessed. And robbed her wantonly, seeing that she herself set no value on Dan’s love—had, in fact, tossed it aside like an outworn plaything.
June ceased to plead with Dan then. She would not wish to hold him by any other chain than his love for her. And if that chain had snapped—broken irrevocably—then the child born of what had once been love would only be an encumbrance in his eyes, an unwelcome tie, shackling him to a duty from which he longed to escape.
So she let him go—let him go in silence. . . .