He became aware of her piteous attitude. “What have I said?” he asked solicitously.
In distress, she replied: “What you mustn’t say again. If you do, it’s the end. It makes things impossible.”
“I don’t see why it should. If I weren’t honest about it, it would be a different matter. But I am honest. I can’t tell you that I’ve waited for you all these years, for the simple reason that I never dreamed I should see your face again. But I’ve been true to your memory. It has knocked out the possibility of any other woman. That’s plain fact.”
Womanlike, she said: “I suppose I’ve wrecked your life. God knows I never meant to.”
Then he rose and flung his arms out. His essential integrity spoke through his egotism. He tapped his broad chest.
“Wrecked my life? If a man’s a man, do you suppose his life can be wrecked by anybody but himself? Do I look like a wreck? I’ve lived every minute of these twenty years to the full power of body and brain. If I made any appeal, on that score, to your pity or suchlike sentiments, I should be a contemptible liar. If there’s any question of playing the devil with lives, I did it with yours.”
“Oh, no, no!” Her voice quivered and she sank back in her chair, with averted head. “Of course not. That’s absurd.”
“Well then,” he asked, “what’s all the fuss about? We loved each other when we parted. Pretty passionately and desperately, too. Why we shouldn’t love each other now, when fate throws us together again, I can’t understand.”
She answered wearily: “I’ve told you. The years that the locust hath eaten.”
“What locust?”