She said proudly, "You don't understand. If I was sure I loved a man, and wanted to marry him, it would be for what he meant to me, not what he had meant to other women." He started eagerly to interrupt, but she held up her hand. "But even if you were that man," she said firmly, "I wouldn't say 'yes.' It would only mean unhappiness for both of us—in the end. We are not meant for each other."
"But why?—why?" he cried.
She replied, "I cannot tell you."
"It's unjust. Unfair! You're denying me—and perhaps yourself—the greatest happiness in the world, and giving no reason for it."
"Please!" she cried, as he seemed about to sweep her into his arms, to crush out all of her doubts and questionings. "There is so much unnecessary suffering in the world. Let us spare ourselves any needless pain. I mean what I have said—and please believe that I am sorry—for both of us."
He followed her with stricken, beaten eyes as she slowly walked into her office and took her hat and coat.
"Good-bye, Mary," he said as calmly as he could.
"Good-bye," she said. "I shall be in in the the morning—as usual."
As usual! When she had gone, he flung himself into John's chair and put his head into his arms, pressing his fingers into his forehead to crush out the pain that was there. He remained thus for half an hour, unable to think, to move, aching in body and soul. Then, gradually, a reaction set in. Why had he to suffer so? Why had the only pure love he had ever had in his life been cast aside as if it were something presumptuous, unclean?
He forced himself to his feet and walked into his own office, hardly knowing what he was doing, and, spreading the papers from his brief case out upon his desk, he tried to work on the new estimates for Dorning. He was starting to pity himself now, and gradually a fierce resentment, not against Mary—for he still loved Mary—but against the whole scheme of things, the world with its petty moral code, seized him. He laughed aloud, and it echoed very unpleasantly through the vacant office. Bah! What was the use of burying his past, when the past had arisen from its coffin to mock him at the critical moment. Bah! Why deny one's self pleasures, why fight against women like Elise, why try to change the leopard's spots when the world chose to think them blacker than they really were?