“You don’t mean that. You are angry with me. I’ll soon make you love me again as you did once, Marion. You’ll do it when you are my wife.”
“No—no—I never will,” I said steadily, “because—because—there’s another reason, Reggie. There’s some one else, some one who loves me, and whom I adore!”
I hope I may never see a man look like Reggie did then. He had turned gray, even to his lips. He just stared at me, and I think the truth of what I had said slowly sank in upon him. He drew back.
“I hope you’ll be happy!” he said, and I replied:
“Oh, and I hope you will be, too.”
I followed him to the door and he kept on staring at me with that dazed and incredulous look upon his face. Then he went out and I closed the door forever on Reggie Bertie.
* * * * * *
The expressman had just put my trunk in the studio. I opened the door of the little room that Paul had fixed up for me.
“Are you afraid, darling?” he asked. “Are you going to regret giving yourself to a poor devil like me?”
I answered him as steadily as my voice would let me, for I was trembling.