“Intuition, I suppose—and when I seemed to realize what his love for you meant. He could only love what was worthy of him.”
“That is why he can love me no more,” said Katherine in a low voice.
She paused for a moment, her breath coming quickly. Then she continued hurriedly, twining her fingers in a nervous clasp: “Things have happened that make it impossible for him to care for me—I shall never see him again. I am going away this afternoon—see,”—she pointed to a dressing-bag packed, but still open, lying on the table. “And I shall pass out of his life altogether.”
“But I don't understand!” cried Felicia, in grieved dismay. “What could make him cease to love you?”
“I have not been what the world calls a good woman, Felicia. God knows I have paid the penalty already—but the bitterest penalty of all is yet to be paid—the surrender of the longed-for Paradise, that only a woman who has lived as I have done can long for. Oh, my child, my dear, tender little girl, the way of the world is made hard for women sometimes.”
“Why should the women always suffer?” asked Felicia.
“Why? God knows. It is life.”
“If I were a man,” said Felicia, with a glow in her eyes, “I would think it dastardly to let a woman suffer, if I loved her.”
“There are some things that kill love,” replied Katherine bitterly.
“Has Raine told you so?”