It was impossible to withstand him, and, in desperation, Monica realized that it was worse than useless to pit her reason against a love she desired more than all the world. She felt utterly helpless, like one swept off her feet by an irresistible tide. There was a recklessness, too, in her blood now, a recklessness flowing hotly through veins which for so long had been left unstirred in their perfect calm, and somehow the joy of it had intoxicated her reason and left her unable to adequately control it.
Later it would be different. When he had gone she would be able to think soberly, and she knew she would have to think hard to repair the damage of these moments. She would wait till then when the toll was demanded of her, and now—now? These moments were too sweetly precious to deny. She would not, she could not deny them. So, while she knew that every fraction of the penalty would be demanded of her later, she thanked her God for this love that had come to her, and abandoned herself to its delight.
CHAPTER III
THE PENALTY
It was a changed woman who restlessly paced the narrow limits of her sitting-room four days later. Monica was awaiting another visitor; again she was awaiting the ominous clang of the bell at the front door. But her feelings were very different now. The timid shrinking, the mere thrill of troubled apprehension with which she had awaited the coming of the man who had changed all those things into a wild, reckless joy, was nothing to the desperation with which she contemplated the coming visit. She knew that the penalty was about to be exacted, the toll, for the stolen moments when she had permitted the woman in her to taste of the sweets which surely she had a right to.
The sober moments she had anticipated had come; oh, yes, they had come as she knew they inevitably must come. She had faced the consequences of the weakness she believed herself to have displayed in all their nakedness, and she saw before her such a tangle, the contemplation of which had set her head whirling, and filled her heart with despair.
She was torn between her loyalty to the living, and her duty to the dead. She was torn between that which she knew she owed to herself, and all those other obligations which could be summed up as part of the strong moral side of her nature. She was seeking a central path which might satisfy in some degree each of the opposing claims. She was committing that fatal mistake of seeking the easiest road, with the full knowledge that it was a mistake. She had tasted life, and now she was powerless to continue the sacrifice she had for such long years marked out for herself.
The habit of years was strong upon her. There was something almost superstitious in the way she clung to the promise she had so rashly given her sister. She could no more outrage that than she could deny the love that had come to her so late. Therefore she saw nothing but that perilous middle course open before her.
She had sent for her boy, the man—yes, he was a man now—whom she had been at such pains to bring up with lofty aspirations, and a fine sense of love, and honor, and duty. She told herself she was going to lie to him, lie to him with all the heartless selfishness of an utterly weak and worthless woman. She tried to smother her conscience by reminding herself that she had always seen the necessity of ultimately lying to him, and now only the motive of the lies was changed. She told herself these things, but she did not convince herself. She knew that originally her contemplated lies were that he might be kept from the knowing of his mother's shame, and as such might even have found justification in the eyes of the Recording Angel. Now it was different; their motive was purely one of self, and for such there could be no justification.