"I couldn't know," she told him desperately. "I couldn't foresee what was coming. And I wanted you to win a place in the world. I wanted you to win, as I knew you could if you were unhampered by——"
"Unhampered!" He echoed the word incredulously, as though it were quite new and its meaning not clear. "Is any one ever hampered by love and inspiration and all that——"
"You don't understand," she said. "Nobody can understand physical disability except those who have suffered it. My mother had a sister who was a bed-ridden invalid. She helped her husband to find his place in the world and keep it. But he never seemed to realize that she had helped him. He always thought, though I suppose he never said, that his marriage had held him back. And she died at last of a broken heart. Through all my youth I had her tragedy before me."
There was a moment of silence between them. And then Kenwick spoke slowly. "You hadn't much faith in me, Marcreta. You admit now that you loved me, yet you hadn't much faith—in my character or my——"
"But love comes a long time before faith, Roger. It always does. And I was younger then. I didn't know so much about life and—and character. But, oh, when they wrote me about this! I would have given anything on earth to have lived over again our last night together!"
"I know! I know!" His voice was vibrant with self-reproach.
"Your brother must have been splendid," she went on. "He wrote me such a wonderful letter. But he couldn't soften it; nobody can ever dilute the big tragedies of life. We must drink them unstrained. I knew that you were somewhere in this county, and when I came down here, just that one time, I liked to feel that I was near you. I couldn't have endured to see you, but I wanted to be near you for a little while before—I did anything else. And then that night when you came back, I couldn't be sure——Everything was so changed. You were so different from the carefree boy who had gone away. I knew, of course, that you would be; in a sense, I wanted you to be. But I didn't want you to feel bound by anything that had gone before. I was afraid you might feel that way. Oh, a woman is at such a disadvantage, Roger. She is always at a disadvantage if the man she loves is honorable and chivalrous."
"I had work to do," he reminded her gently. "I had to quiet the title to my name. For when a woman marries a man, Marcreta, she marries his past, every bit of it. Before I could offer my life to you again, I had to be certain that every minute of it was clean and decent and above reproach. I was not willing to let any of it go on the grounds of irresponsibility. I never would have been satisfied. And you never would have been satisfied. There would always have been for both of us terrible moments of doubt. The bramble-bush lay between us. I had to tear it away first; I had to tear it away and look bravely at whatever lay underneath."
A shaft of golden sunlight suddenly broke through the January clouds and slanted across the road. Roger Kenwick's eyes followed it as though seeking for the treasure that might lie revealed at last at the end of a rainbow. A sharp exclamation escaped him. And he felt the quick response of the hand that still lay in his.
Drawing the heavy motor-cloak closer about her, he helped Marcreta Morgan out of the car and guided her to a spot about a hundred yards on the other side of the iron gate. "I remember now!" His words came in the low, awed voice of one who suddenly encounters in broad daylight some object that has played conspicuous part in an evil and oft-recurring dream.