Athalie

"Please, dear--I--"

"Can't you!" he repeated unsteadily, drawing her closer. "You know

what I am asking. Answer me!"

She bent her head and rested it against his shoulder a moment,

considering; she then looked away from him, troubled: "I don't want to be your--mistress," she said. Truth disconcerts the

vast majority. It disconcerted him--after a ringing silence through

which the beating of rain on the window came to him like the steady

tattoo of his own heart.

"I did not ask that," he said, very red.

"You meant that.... Because I've been everything to you except that."

"I want you for my wife," he interrupted sharply.

"But you are married, Clive. So what more can I be to you, unless I

become--what I don't want to become--"

"I merely want you to love me--until I can find some way out of this

hell on earth I'm living in!"

"Dear, I'm sorry! I'm sorry you are so unhappy. But you can't get

free,--can you? She won't let you, will she?"

"I've got to have my freedom! I can't stand this. Good God! Must a man

do life for being a fool once? Isn't there any allowance to be made

for a first offence? I've always wanted to marry you. I was a

miserable, crazy coward to do what I did! Haven't I paid for it? Do

you know what I've been through?"

She said very sweetly and pitifully: "Dear, I know what people

suffer--what lonely hearts endure. I think I understand what you have

been through."

"I know you understand! Fool that I am who enlightened you. But yours

was the injury of bruised faith--the suffering caused by outrage. No

hell of self-contempt set you crawling about the world in agony; no

despicable self-knowledge drove you out into the waste places. Yours

was the sorrow of a self-respecting victim; mine the grief of the

damned fool who has done to death all that he ever loved for the love

of expediency and of self!"

"Clive!--"

"That's what I am!" he interrupted fiercely, "a damned fool! I don't

know what else I am, but I can't live without you, and I won't!"

She said: "You told me that being in love with me would not make you

unhappy. So I told you to love me. I was wrong to let you do it."

"You darling! I am more than happy!"

"It was a dreadful mistake, Clive! I shouldn't have let you."