“Alan,” she said one night, with drooping head, “I’ve had enough. I don’t want to play any more. I want to quit.” She lifted tear-filled eyes to him. The foil of artificiality had been knocked from her hand. She was all woman, and defenseless.
Alan felt a trembling in all his limbs.
“I want to quit, too, Alix,” he said in his low, vibrating voice, “but I’m afraid we can’t. You see, I’m beaten, too. While I was just in love with your body, we were safe enough; but now I’m in love with you. It’s the kind of love a man can pray for in vain. No head in it; nothing but heart. Honor and dishonor become mere names. Nothing matters to me but you.”
Drawn by Reginald Birch
“’HE’D SAIL FOR AFRICA TO-MORROW AND THINK FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE OF HIS ESCAPE FROM YOU AS A CLOSE SHAVE’”
Tears crawled slowly down Alix’s cheeks. She stood with her elbows on the rail and faced the ocean, so no one might see. Her hands were locked. In her mind her own thoughts were running. Somehow she could understand Alan without listening. If only Gerry had done this thing to her, she was thinking, the pitiless, wracking misery would have been joy at white heat. She was unmasked at last; but Gerry had not unmasked her. Not once since the day of the wreck and their engagement had Gerry unmasked himself.
Alan was standing with his side to the rail, his eyes leaving her face only to keep track of the promenaders, so that no officious friend could take her by surprise. He went on talking.
“Our judgment is calling to us to quit, but it is calling from days ago,” he said. “We wouldn’t listen then, and it’s only the echo we hear now. We can try to quit if you like; but when I am alone, I shall call for you, and when you are alone, you will call for me. We shall always be alone except when we are near each other. We can’t break the tension, Alix. It will break us in the end.”
The slow tears were still crawling down Alix’s cheeks. In all her life she had never suffered so before. She felt that each tear paid the price of all her levity.