Dr. Dunlap moved his foot and placed her again on the stone ledge. She leaned against the wall. There was a ringing in her ears. The unpardonable sin in man is not his ceasing to love you. That may be a mortal pain, but it has dignity. It is the fearful judgment of seeing in a flash that you have wasted your life on what was not worth the waste.
"Now if you are composed, Maria," said Dr. Dunlap hurriedly, "I will say what I followed you here to say. The best thing for us to do, now that I am free to do it, is to have the marriage ceremony repeated over us and made valid. I am ready and willing. The only drawback is the prejudice of your family against me."
A magnanimous tone in his voice betrayed eagerness to put the Joneses under obligations to him.
"Dr. Dunlap,"—when Maria had spoken his name she panted awhile,—"when I found out I was not your wife, and left you, I began then to cough. But now—we can never be married."
"Why, Maria?"
She began those formidable sounds again, and he held his breath.
Somebody in the distance began playing a violin. Its music mingled with the sounds which river-inclosed lands and the adjacent dwellings of men send up in a summer night.
"You know," said Maria when she could speak, "how we deceived my people in Wales and in London. None of my family here know anything about that marriage."
Another voice outside the walls, keen with anxiety, shouted her name. Dr. Dunlap hurried a few yards from her, then stopped and held his ground. A man rushed into the old building regardless of the broken floor.
"Maria, are you here?"