The Torch Bearer

by Reina Melcher Marquis

"That would require a great love of her," said Peter gravely, "a great love for a man who could not give a great love in return."

"Yes," she agreed, her voice very low now, but as clear and steady as ever, "yes, it would require a great love from her. But it is not impossible to find a woman who can feel a great love without hope of a full return."

She was still in her sheltering shadow, but upon Peter's end of the garden seat the moonlight, unchecked by the trees, streamed white and strong. She looked into his face, fully revealed to her now, and she realized, before he spoke, that he was going to refuse her sacrifice; she realized it because she saw in his face a deeper emotion for her than he had ever shown before. He loved her not enough—and yet too much!—to marry her. She saw that and was prepared for his next words.

"To such a woman the man I have in mind could not give less than his best," he said. And there was no longer any question, any hesitancy in his tone. "To one so generous no man could be ungenerous—I should have known that! Perhaps," he went on, with a note of distress and apology, "perhaps such things should not be talked about. Perhaps it is—humiliating——"

"To me the truth could never be humiliating," she answered, with quick reassurance.

"Then it is best to speak it?" he pleaded, as if for self-justification. "Then it is best to speak it, after all? For it does make things—plain; it does show one the right, the decent course."

"It's best to speak it," she assented kindly; and she held out her hand to him.

He lifted her hand and kissed it. And when he spoke again, his voice faltered: "When a man knows a woman like you, Charlotte, he sees that happiness—or unhappiness—doesn't matter so much as he's thought. There are other things—better things—to live for. You've found them—and now I'm going to find them, too, my dear."

So, for the second time that day, Peter went from a woman who loved him. The night and the stars and the flowers had done their best to quicken his pulses; to blur his vision of the truth; to blunt his sense of absolute, unswerving honor. But in the end Charlotte herself had defeated what the night was fain to do for her with its witchery; she had defeated the night's intents with her measureless honesty and generosity—to which Peter's own generosity and honesty could but respond. To use a woman like Charlotte as a barrier between himself and another woman was impossible to him. Neither for Sheila's safety, nor for any benefit to himself, could he do a thing so base. He recognized now that marriage with Charlotte—even without that utter love he had given to Sheila—might be a gracious, even a happy destiny for him. But having found her so ready to sacrifice herself, he could not sacrifice her. He could not rob her of the chance of being loved as she could love. Such a love might come to her some day; he could but leave her free for it.

As he walked homeward along the silent, wide street, other gardens than Charlotte's flung their fragrance to him; the night still whispered to him of the sweetness of being loved, of all those compensations from which he had turned away. But he was not allured; he was not vanquished. His course stretched before him—through the befogging, unmanning sweetness—to daylight and self-respect and an uncompromising sincerity of life. It stretched before him farther than he could descry—as far as the great fighting, suffering, achieving world. Mrs. Caldwell had once told him that he had never grown up, and that some day he would have to grow up; that there could be no escape for him. She had been right about it. Until now he had not grown up. Not even in his love for Sheila and the pain of it, had he grown up. He had been like a child playing in a garden, and though the sweetest rose there had torn him with its thorns, he had stayed on in the garden. But now he was a child no longer; there had been no escape from growing up. He had put it off a long time—more than half his lifetime perhaps—but he had not been able to put it off forever. And now, yielding at last, he was willing to leave his garden; he was willing to go out into the world of men.