I never heard her say a spiteful thing before nor since—but when it comes to the matter of the Other Woman, all women are alike.
Bargany stamped his foot in very anger.
'A fig for dignities, and a rotten fig for Isobel Stewart,' he cried. 'I love but you, Marjorie Kennedy! Will you come to me, so that you and I may face the world together? For it is a black world and needs two hearts that can stand by each other.'
Then betwixt me and the sea (as I have said) I saw Marjorie knitting and clasping her hands as if her spirit were wrestling within her.
'Yea, Gilbert,' she said, very gently at last, 'it is as you say, a black, black world. But neither you nor I are going to better it by the breaking of trysts and engagements!'
'And what tryst have you?' he demanded sullenly.
'I am trysted to sorrow,' she answered, 'trysted for ever to want that which most I desire, and to have that which most I hate. Gilbert Kennedy, take my hand this once and hearken. You and I are too greatly like one another to be happy together. We are not mates born for smooth things. Sorrow is our dower and suffering our weird, and the pity of it is that we must dree it apart. I think we are both "fey" to-night,' she said, breaking off with a change of tone. 'We had best go within.'
'Within?' said Bargany, scornfully, for he bethought him that he could never enter the house of Culzean as a friend.
'Now, Gilbert,' said Marjorie, 'be a man and forgive. Be a man also to Isobel Stewart, that she may know you a truer man than she has ever met in King's courts—ay, truer and nobler, as I think you, than the King himself. And let me go my way....' She covered her face with her hands and stood a space silent and bowed. 'Let me go my way!' she said again. And so would have gone from him.
But Gilbert Kennedy had her in his two arms and was kissing her mouth, and that often and passionately.