“Then why, in Heaven’s name, won’t you let me be your friend? You make a scoundrel of me, borrowing money from another man to get out of my clutches.”
“If I borrow from him, it’s to study. Anything I took from you would be different. As I said before, you’d be keeping me.”
“Keeping! I like your language. It’s pure Moonstone, Thea,—like your point of view. I wonder how long you’ll be a Methodist.” He turned away bitterly.
“Well, I’ve never said I wasn’t Moonstone, have I? I am, and that’s why I want Dr. Archie. I can’t see anything so funny about Moonstone, you know.” She pushed her chair back a little from the hearth and clasped her hands over her knee, still looking thoughtfully into the red coals. “We always come back to the same thing, Fred. The name, as you call it, makes a difference to me how I feel about myself. You would have acted very differently with a girl of your own kind, and that’s why I can’t take anything from you now. You’ve made everything impossible. Being married is one thing and not being married is the other thing, and that’s all there is to it. I can’t see how you reasoned with yourself, if you took the trouble to reason. You say I was too much alone, and yet what you did was to cut me off more than I ever had been. Now I’m going to try to make good to my friends out there. That’s all there is left for me.”
“Make good to your friends!” Fred burst out. “What one of them cares as I care, or believes as I believe? I’ve told you I’ll never ask a gracious word from you until I can ask it with all the churches in Christendom at my back.”
Thea looked up, and when she saw Fred’s face, she thought sadly that he, too, looked as if things were spoiled for him. “If you know me as well as you say you do, Fred,” she said slowly, “then you are not being honest with yourself. You know that I can’t do things halfway. If you kept me at all—you’d keep me.” She dropped her head wearily on her hand and sat with her forehead resting on her fingers.
Fred leaned over her and said just above his breath, “Then, when I get that divorce, you’ll take it up with me again? You’ll at least let me know, warn me, before there is a serious question of anybody else?”
Without lifting her head, Thea answered him. “Oh, I don’t think there will ever be a question of anybody else. Not if I can help it. I suppose I’ve given you every reason to think there will be,—at once, on shipboard, any time.”
Ottenburg drew himself up like a shot. “Stop it, Thea!” he said sharply. “That’s one thing you’ve never done. That’s like any common woman.” He saw her shoulders lift a little and grow calm. Then he went to the other side of the room and took up his hat and gloves from the sofa. He came back cheerfully. “I didn’t drop in to bully you this afternoon. I came to coax you to go out for tea with me somewhere.” He waited, but she did not look up or lift her head, still sunk on her hand.
Her handkerchief had fallen. Fred picked it up and put it on her knee, pressing her fingers over it. “Good-night, dear and wonderful,” he whispered,—“wonderful and dear! How can you ever get away from me when I will always follow you, through every wall, through every door, wherever you go.” He looked down at her bent head, and the curve of her neck that was so sad. He stooped, and with his lips just touched her hair where the firelight made it ruddiest. “I didn’t know I had it in me, Thea. I thought it was all a fairy tale. I don’t know myself any more.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “The salt’s all gone out of your hair. It’s full of sun and wind again. I believe it has memories.” Again she heard him take a deep breath. “I could do without you for a lifetime, if that would give you to yourself. A woman like you doesn’t find herself, alone.”