Part 7 (1/2)

”Left him?”

”Yes. I have obtained a divorce. He was unfaithful to me.”

”I see”--said Littleton with a sort of gasp--”I see. I did not know. You never wrote to me.”

”I did not feel like writing to any body. There was nothing to be done but that.”

Littleton regarded her with a perturbed, restless air.

”Then you live no longer at 25 Onslow Avenue?”

”Oh, no. I left there more than six months ago. I live in lodgings. I am supporting myself by literary work. I am Mrs. Selma White now, and my divorce has been absolute more than a month.”

She spoke gravely and quietly, with less than her usual a.s.surance, for she felt the spell of his keen, eager scrutiny and was not averse to yield at the moment to the propensity of her s.e.x. She wondered what he was thinking about. Did he blame her? Did he sympathize with her?

”Where are you going when you leave here?” he asked.

”Home--to my new home. Will you walk along with me?”

”That is what I should like. I am astonished by what you have told me, and am anxious to hear more about it, if to speak of it would not wound you. Divorced! How you must have suffered! And I did not have the chance to offer you my help--my sympathy.”

”Yes, I have suffered. But that is all over now. I am a free woman. I am beginning my life over again.”

It was a beautiful afternoon, and by mutual consent, which neither put into words, they diverged from the exact route to Selma's lodging house and turned their steps to the open country beyond the city limits--the picturesque dell which has since become the site of Benham's public park. There they seated themselves where they would not be interrupted.

Selma told him on the way the few vital facts in her painful story, to which he listened in a tense silence, broken chiefly by an occasional e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n expressive of his contempt for the man who had brought such unhappiness upon her. She let him understand, too, that her married life, from the first, had been far less happy than he had imagined--wretched makes.h.i.+ft for the true relation of husband and wife.

She spoke of her future buoyantly, yet with a touch of sadness, as though to indicate that she was aware that the triumphs of intelligence and individuality could not entirely be a subst.i.tute for a happy home.

”And what do you expect to do?” he inquired in a bewildered fas.h.i.+on, as though her delineation of her hopes had been lost on him.

”Do? Support myself by my own exertions, as I have told you. By writing I expect. I am doing very well already. Do you question my ability to continue?”

”Oh, no; not that. Only--”

”Only what? Surely you are not one of the men who grudge women the chance to prove what is in them--who would treat us like china dolls and circ.u.mscribe us by conventions? I know you are not, because I have heard you inveigh against that very sort of narrow mindedness. Only what?”

”I can't make up my mind to it. And I suppose the reason is that it means so much to me--that you mean so much to me. What is the use of my dodging the truth, Selma--seeking to conceal it because such a short time has elapsed since you ceased to be a wife? Forgive me if I hurt you, if it seem indelicate to speak of love at the very moment when you are happy in your liberty. I can't help it; it's my nature to speak openly. And there's no bar now. The fact that you are free makes clear to me what I have not dared to countenance before, that you are the one woman in the world for me--the woman I have dreamed of--and longed to meet--the woman whose influence has blessed me already, and without whom I shall lack the greatest happiness which life can give. Selma, I love you--I adore you.”

Selma listened with greedy ears, which she could scarcely believe. It seemed to her that she was in dream-land, so unexpected, yet entrancing, was his avowal. She had been vaguely aware that he admired her more than he had allowed himself to disclose, and conscious, too, that his presence was agreeable to her; but in an instant now she recognized that this was love--the love she had sought, the love she had yearned to inspire and to feel. Compared with it, Babc.o.c.k's clumsy ecstasy and her own sufferance of it had been a sham and a delusion. Of so much she was conscious in a twinkling, and yet what she deemed proper self-respect restrained her from casting herself into his arms. It was, indeed, soon, and she had been happy in her liberty. At least, she had supposed herself so; and she owed it to her own plans and hopes not to act hastily, though she knew what she intended to do. She had been lonely, yes starving, for lack of true companions.h.i.+p, and here was the soul which would be a true mate to hers.

They were sitting on a gra.s.sy bank. He was bending toward her with clasped hands, a picture of fervor. She could see him out of the corner of her glance, though she looked into s.p.a.ce with her gaze of seraphic worry. Yet her lips were ready to lend themselves to a smile of blissful satisfaction and her eyes to fill with the melting mood of the thought that at last happiness had come to her.

The silence was very brief, but Littleton, as would have seemed fitting to her, feared lest she were shocked.

”I distress you,” he said. ”Forgive me. Listen--will you listen?” Selma was glad to listen. The words of love, such love as this, were delicious, and she felt she owed it to herself not to be won too easily.

”I am listening,” she answered softly with the voice of one face to face with an array of doubts.

”Before I met you, Selma, woman but was a name to me. My life brought me little into contact with them, except my dear sister, and I had no temptation to regret that I could not support a wife. Yet I dreamed of woman and of love and of a joy which might some day come to me if I could meet one who fulfilled my ideal of what a true woman should be. So I dreamed until I met you. The first time I saw you, Selma, I knew in my heart that you were a woman whom I could love. Perhaps I should have recognized more clearly as time went on that you were more to me even then than I had a right to allow; yet I call heaven to witness that I did not, by word or sign, do a wrong to him who has done such a cruel wrong to you.”