“I am going away on the train that leaves here for Chicago at eight minutes to two,” Rodney said, ignoring all extrinsic subjects. “Myrtle’s people replied to a telegram from me that she might be buried in their family lot; they live about fifteen miles outside Chicago. The Sisters sent them word that Myrtle was in their hands, dying; they did not reply. Neither did I reply to a letter from the Sisters. You made me come on. Queer, isn’t it, that I, who am no relation to her, and you who never knew her, are the only ones to see Myrtle out off the earth, and decently put into it?” Rodney spoke with a visible effort.
“You are related to her; you two were made one flesh,” said Cis.
“Well, Cis, I’m going to own up! The Church is right. I’ve been feeling that. Myrtle separated herself from me by a chasm that no honorable man would cross; that’s all so. But the state did not divorce me from her; it couldn’t. If marriage asserts itself, in spite of that impassable chasm of disgrace and infamy, as it surely does, then it’s beyond the reach of the state. You were right; I was wrong. If we had been married last night, kneeling beside Myrtle, neither of us could have borne it. Curious, isn’t it? But you were right. Is it any satisfaction to you to have me acknowledge it? I hope it is. I was furiously, bitterly angry with you, Cis, but you were right. I’m able to see now that it cost you high to choose as you did.”
“It hurt, Rodney,” said Cis simply. “I don’t suppose I should say now that it cost me high; I realize that I made a tremendous purchase at a low rate. I’ve been thinking how strange it is: You are taking Myrtle’s body to Chicago, then to her own people!”
“On that eight minutes to two,” Rodney corroborated her.
“Yes. How strange it is that you have come to say good-bye to me, and are going away with Myrtle, after all,” Cis completed her thought.
“But, Cis, it is not reunited to her,” Rodney protested. “It is recognition that the divorce did not set me free to marry you, but there was far more than any decree separating me from Myrtle. And therefore there is no reason for conventionality, no reason for assuming that my wife has just died, and that I am on my way to bury her. I am not; I am seeing her looked after and I grant you I could not marry again on my divorce, yet there’s no wife of mine newly dead, either. Cis, now I am free. Now the Church puts no barrier between us. You can be as Catholic as you will, and yet marry me. There’s nothing to wait for; we’ve spent a long probation. When, Cis?”
“Never, Rodney,” said Cis quietly. “I hoped you understood that.”
“I understood that you wanted me to understand it when you told me you’d see me to say good-bye. You couldn’t have expected me to go off on a hint! Why won’t you marry me, Cis? You have changed enormously, but I know you’re not fickle, not easily moved, either way. You still love me?” Rodney pleaded.
“No, Rodney, I don’t,” Cis said. “It amazes me to find that you stir memories of feeling, but no feeling. Don’t you think, perhaps, there is a reaction from intense pain that produces in the mind something like the immunity that a violent sickness produces in the physical system? I was dashed to pieces, and the reassembled person has lost the vibration to your personality.”