Part 24 (2/2)
”What sort of a woman are you?” Riatt exclaimed. ”Will you take any man that offers, me or Hickson, or Linburne or me again, just as luck will have it?”
”I take the best that offers, Max--and that's no lie.”
The implied compliment did not soften Riatt. He went on: ”If you and I are really to be married--”
”If, my dear Max! What could be more certain?”
”Since, then, we are to be married, you must tell me exactly what has taken place between you and Linburne.”
”With pleasure. Won't you sit down?” She pointed to a chair near her own, but Riatt remained standing. ”Shall we have tea first?”
”We'll have the story.”
”Oh, it's not much of a story. Lee and I have known each other since we were children. I suppose I always had it in mind that I might marry him--”
”You loved him?”
”Certainly not. He always had too high an opinion of himself, and I used to enjoy taking it out of him--and making it up to him afterwards, too. I used to enjoy that as well. Sometimes, of course, he found the process too unbearable; and in one of his fits of anger at me, just after he left college, he went and blundered into this marriage with Pauline. She, you see, took him at his own valuation. His marriage seemed to put an end to everything between us--”
”You surprise me.”
Christine laughed. ”Ah, I was younger then.”
”You kept on seeing him?”
”Naturally we met now and then. Sometimes he used to tell me how I was the only woman--”
”That is your idea of putting an end to everything?”
”Oh, if one took seriously all the men who say that--I did not think much about Lee's feelings for me, until my engagement was announced.
Then it appeared that the notion of my marrying some one else was intolerable to him.”
”A high order of affection,” exclaimed Riatt. ”He was content enough until there seemed some chance of your being happy.”
”Perhaps he did not consider that life with you would promise absolute happiness, Max.”
”I don't call that love. I call it jealousy.”
At this Christine laughed outright. ”And what emotion, may I ask, has just brought you here in such haste?”
The thrust went home. Riatt changed countenance.
”But I,” he said, ”never pretended to love you.”
”Why then are you marrying me?”
”Heaven knows.”
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