She knew that she could have made Jim hers long ago with a little less severity, a less harsh rebuff. The Church condemned her for openly divorcing her husband. She might have kept him on the leash and carried on the affair with Jim that Cheever accused her of if Jim had been complacent and stealthy. Or, she might have kept Jim at her heels till she was rid of Cheever and then have married him. She would have saved him at least from floundering through the marsh where that Kedzie-o'-the-wisp had led him to ultimate disaster.
And now that she had taken stock of her past and put it into the fire, she felt strangely exiled. She had no past, no present, and a future all hazy. Her loneliness was complete. She had to talk to some one, and she telephoned to Jim Dyckman, making her good-bys an excuse.
It was the first time he had been permitted to hear her voice for weeks, and the lonely joy that cried out in his greeting brought warm tears to her dull, dry eyes.
He heard her weeping and he demanded the right to come to see her. She refused him and cut off his plea, hoping that he would come, anyway, and waiting tremulously till the door-bell rang with a forgotten thrill of a caller, a lover calling.
Her maid, who brought her Jim's name, begged with her eyes that he should not be turned away again. Charity nodded and prinked a little and went down-stairs into Jim's arms.
He took her there as if she belonged there and she felt that she did, though she protested, feebly:
“You are not unmarried yet.”
They were in that No-Man's-Land. She was neither maid, wife, nor widow, but divorcée. He was neither bachelor, husband, nor widower; he was not even a divorcé. He was a Nisi Prius.