Part 10 (1/2)

CHAPTER VII.

For a few moments Underwood was too much overcome by emotion to speak.

Alicia brushed by in haughty silence, not deigning to look at him. All he heard was the soft rustle of her clinging silk gown as it swept along the floor. She was incensed with him, of course, but she had come. That was all he asked. She had come in time to save him. He would talk to her and explain everything and she would understand. She would help him in this crisis as she had in the past. Their long friends.h.i.+p, all these years of intimacy, could not end like this. There was still hope for him. The situation was not as desperate as he feared. He might yet avert the shameful end of the suicide. Advancing toward her, he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper:

”Oh, this is good of you, you've come--this is the answer to my letter.”

Alicia ignored his extended hand and took a seat. Then, turning on him, she exclaimed indignantly:

”The answer should be a horsewhip. How dare you send me such a message?”

Drawing from her bag the letter received from him that evening, she demanded:

”What do you expect to gain by this threat?”

”Don't be angry, Alicia.”

Underwood spoke soothingly, trying to conciliate her. Well he knew the seductive power of his voice. Often he had used it and not in vain, but to-night it fell on cold, indifferent ears.

”Don't call me by that name,” she snapped.

Underwood made no answer. He turned slightly paler and, folding his arms, just looked at her, in silence. There was an awkward pause.

At last she said:

”I hope you understand that everything's over between us. Our acquaintance is at an end.”

”My feelings toward you can never change,” replied Underwood earnestly.

”I love you--I shall always love you.”

Alicia gave a little shrug of her shoulders, expressive of utter indifference.

”Love!” she exclaimed mockingly. ”You love no one but yourself.”

Underwood advanced nearer to her and there was a tremor in his voice as he said:

”You have no right to say that. You remember what we once were. Whose fault is it that I am where I am to-day? When you broke our engagement and married old Jeffries to gratify your social ambition, you ruined my life. You didn't destroy my love--you couldn't kill that. You may forbid me everything--to see you--to speak to you--even to think of you, but I can never forget that you are the only woman I ever cared for. If you had married me, I might have been a different man. And now, just when I want you most, you deny me even your friends.h.i.+p. What have I done to deserve such treatment? Is it fair? Is it just?”

Alicia had listened with growing impatience. It was only with difficulty that she contained herself. Now she interrupted him hotly:

”I broke my engagement with you because I found that you were deceiving me--just as you deceived others.”

”It's a lie!” broke in Underwood. ”I may have trifled with others, but I never deceived you.”

Alicia rose and, crossing the room, carelessly inspected one of the pictures on the wall, a study of the nude by Bouguereau.

”We need not go into that,” she said haughtily. ”That is all over now. I came to ask you what this letter--this threat----means. What do you expect to gain by taking your life unless I continue to be your friend?

How can I be a friend to a man like you? You know what your friends.h.i.+p for a woman means. It means that you would drag her down to your own level and disgrace her as well as yourself. Thank G.o.d, my eyes are now opened to your true character. No self-respecting woman could afford to allow her name to be a.s.sociated with yours. You are as incapable of disinterested friends.h.i.+p as you are of common honesty.” Coldly she added: ”I hope you quite understand that henceforth my house is closed to you. If we happen to meet in public, it must be as strangers.”