“Then can you wonder?”
“You don’t mean to say it was on my account you broke off your marriage with a millionaire?”
She answered me with a shade of bitterness.
“Listen, Horace; there need be no mincing of matters between us two. Since I saw you last I have been greatly interested in Woman’s Suffrage. In fact I have been devoting myself body and soul to the Cause. Even now I am returning from a series of meetings in England, which I attended as a delegate from New York, and mixing with these noble-minded women has completely cured me of that false modesty that so handicaps our sex. I believe now that it is a woman’s privilege, just as much as a man’s, to declare her affection. Horace, I love you. I have always loved you from that day. Will you be my husband?”
I grew pale. I hung my head. My lips trembled.
“Boadicea,” I faltered, “I cannot. It is too late. I am already married.”
I saw the strong woman shrink as if she had received a blow. Then quickly she recovered herself.
“How was it? Tell me about it,” she said quickly.
So there, as we watched the rolling of the whale-grey sea and each billow seemed part of a cosmic conspiracy to upset my equilibrium, I told her the story of Anastasia’s desertion.
“Of course,” I said brokenly, “I’ll never see her again. In fact, even now I am sueing for a divorce. In a few months I expect to be a free man.”