“Well!—very often then!” he agreed. “And I shall be glad to see you happy—”
“And will you be happy yourself?” she asked.
“Most assuredly! Why should I not be so? No wife, no household cares, no domestic squabbles,—just myself to consider and only myself. There now!—you look quite incredulous!—and why are you incredulous? Simply because you have too much sentiment. You imagine that happiness consists in being loved,—perhaps it does—for a time—”
“Only for a time?” she queried, with uplifted eyebrows.
“Of course—everything is only for a time—life itself is only for a time. Love—or what is called love, is more transitory than life. Look at the war widows! They were supposed to ‘love’ their husbands—but they are quite ready and eager to take on new men. No, my dear child!—there’s no such thing as what you imagine to be ‘love.’ And you need not for one moment make me an object of compassion in your mind—because I know that fact and accept it. Possibly when I was younger, a woman might have liked me, or I might have liked a woman for a month or so—”
She laughed.
“As you like me!—or thought you did!” she said. “And you would have married me on that basis—if I would have had you!”
He smiled—that peculiarly attractive smile of his which made the plain, hard, intellectual lines of his face soften and become handsome.
“True! If you would have had me!” he echoed. “And I should have done my duty in taking care of you,—lest the winds of heaven should visit your face too roughly.” His voice was for the moment almost musical in its tone of kindness. Then he took her hand. “There, little girl! Don’t worry yourself or give another thought to this grumpy old fellow! You may make yourself quite sure that I am entirely happy—happy to have known you, for you are a winsome little creature!—and happier still to have been useful in bringing back the man you love and who loves you, to his home and good fortune. And”—here he paused for a moment meditatively—“if I am perfectly candid with you—brutally candid!—I am happiest of all in the positive knowledge that you are marrying Jack, and not me! That’s a great mercy! I thank heaven for my freedom!”
She gave him one flashing upward glance, half of doubt, half of anger, and pulled her hand away from his,—then, turning with a swift little rush of her light feet and soft garments she ran out of the room.