“By the time you return,” she said, “I will have luncheon ready. Good night, now, Miss Ellwood, I will not say good bye, as I hope to see you often.” Waving her hand in adieu, she mounted the car and was gone.
Five minutes walk in another direction brought them to the car that it was needful to take to reach Imelda’s home, and soon they were being whirled along to their destination. The car was almost deserted, which gave them an opportunity to continue their conversation. Margaret did not say much, but seemed rather to enjoy listening to her friend and lover as they traversed the same ground that she had passed over not so very long since, for although the daughter of a radical mother, that mother had not always been radical. The time was not very far gone by when the old prejudices still held her in bondage, and the fear of what the world might say, restrained her in all she would say and do.
Margaret long felt the influence of those earlier teachings. It had been harder for her to break away from the old beliefs and superstitions than for her mother; but—“Love works wonders” was true in this case. Wilbur Wallace was of that type of men who are sure to win conviction where once they gain a foothold. Gifted with a bright intellect and a manner of speech both positive and fluent, he carried conviction to the minds of his hearers. It had been at an entertainment, to which she had accompanied her mother, that Margaret had first met Wilbur. The young couple had from the first been attracted, which attraction soon ripened into more than mere friendship.
But young Wallace was not without bitter experience; as he had observed home and family life he had found it anything but perfect. He had seen a sweet and gentle mother suffer from the arbitrary monogamy of her married life to such extent that it had laid her in an early grave. The lesson of the ending of that life had entered like a corroding iron into the soul of her first born, a boy then but eighteen years of age. From the hour his idolized mother was laid beneath the green sod he had never entered his father’s home. Life was a problem he had set himself to study, and the more he studied the greater the problem became. But he was not easily daunted. He kept his eyes open, thus soon discovering that the world was full of wrongs that needed righting.
Soon Wilbur Wallace’s name was classed among those who were laboring in the cause of the poor and lowly. But woman’s cause seemed ever to lie nearest his heart. The memory of one sweet woman lay enshrined within the depths of his heart; for her sake he sought for truths that should be the means of saving other women from a like heart-break. The faces of two weeping girls, as he had seen them last, would arise before his mind’s eye, and more firmly than ever did the resolve become rooted to save them from a like fate. The years had rolled by; he was twenty-seven and his sisters young women of twenty and twenty-three. He had never seen them again, for many miles separated him from the place that had known his childhood days.
CHAPTER XII.
Then had come the hour of temptation to him. Sweet Margaret had come into his life, and he found himself shaken to the very depths of his being, but he came forth conqueror. He loved the girl with all the power of an intense nature, but he would never seek to bind her. His love should bless her but never prove a scourge. The girl’s heart had grown faint when it had caught his meaning. Love, sweet, pure soul-redeeming love, had come to her, but not such as the world knew it. She was not to know the meaning of the word wife. O, how her love had been tested! But love had conquered, and together they had studied the problem that had at first appeared as though it would prove the shoal upon which their bark of life was to be wrecked. But the skillful hands of reason had warded off the dreaded disaster and had safely guided them through the rocks out into the smooth waters of the mid ocean, but for the present they were adrift; as yet they could not see the shore, the haven where they might safely be anchored. Now and then this caused the trusting maiden an anxious pang, the honorable man a deeper pain than he wished to betray, but the sky was clear, bright sunshine and smooth waters made the way very pleasant. So they were content to drift on.
Margaret had learned to understand the meaning of the glorious freedom that her lover sought to secure to her. She had looked deep into the mysteries of married life with the aid of that mother whose experiences had been so terrible. She had learned also to walk with open eyes and to read the signs as she walked. And oh, how her pure soul revolted at the hideous sights that were covered with a filmy veil, sights that the gauze like covering made only the more horrible by the vain attempt at concealment.
She lifted the smiling blue eyes to the clouded face of her friend who seemed almost to have forgotten her presence.
“Well, Imelda, what do you think? Do you now understand how I could express myself as I did some days ago?”