He waited breathlessly for her answer.
“I won’t wreck both our lives by marrying again without love on my side,” she replied, firmly.
“I will take the risk,” he said. “You have loved me; you will love me again. You are crushed and dazed now with brooding over this—this trouble, but—”
“But I will not allow you to take the risk,” Kathleen answered. “What sort of woman should I be to be willing again to live with a man I don’t love? I have come to know that there are things one owes to one’s self. Self-respect is one of them. I don’t know how it has come to be so, but all my old feeling for you has gone. It is as though it had burned itself out. I will not offer gray ashes to any man.”
Broomhurst, looking up at her pale, set face, knew that her words were final, and turned his own aside with a groan.
“Ah,” cried Kathleen, with a little break in her voice, “don’t! Go away, and be happy and strong, and all that I loved in you. I am so sorry—so sorry to hurt you. I—” her voice faltered miserably; “I—I only bring trouble to people.”
There was a long pause.
“Did you never think that there is a terrible vein of irony running through the ordering of this world?” she said, presently. “It is a mistake to think our prayers are not answered—they are. In due time we get our heart’s desire—when we have ceased to care for it.”
“I haven’t yet got mine,” Broomhurst answered, doggedly, “and I shall never cease to care for it.”
She smiled a little, with infinite sadness.