The Open Question Part 113

Instead of being glad, he was conscious of an absurd irritation. She could sleep, then!

Covertly he watched her the next morning, thinking with surprise:

"Yes, even in the broad daylight and away from the haunted long room, I'm of last night's opinion still. It doesn't matter about me--for her sake I must go on."

"Come and sit on the terrace," he said, when she was leaving the breakfast-room.

"Oh, dearest, not now."

"Why not?"

"I--I'm a house-keeper, you know. I have many things to do in the morning."

"I give you ten minutes by my watch to order dinner."

"Ethan, if you never leave me to myself, I--I can't get ready."

He put his arm through hers, and led her out by the veranda down to the second terrace. The servant was spreading a Navajo blanket on the ground, under the catalpa-tree. Val sat down on the barbaric colored rug, and watched Ethan walking to and fro on the edge of the terrace.

When they were alone--

"Did you misunderstand me yesterday, that you talk again to-day of getting ready?"

"No, I understood--I understood that because I cried you were ready to let me break the compact if I wanted to."

He had never heard such contempt in her voice. He stopped and looked at her. Her face was strangely hard.

"Not because you cried, but because I see the matter from another--I think better--point of view."

She shook her head.

"You're deceiving yourself because of me."

Her words angered him unaccountably.

"I should have thought it natural that any woman, especially one of your temperament, would have welcomed the suggestion."

"As if I didn't know it!"

"Know what?"

"That you've been looking out hour by hour, minute by minute, to see if I wasn't showing the white flag."

In his sense of being convicted, he was ready to curse her keenness.

"Do you know, it strikes me you have no inkling of the mother-sense?"

"That's part of my luck," she said, doggedly.

"You don't _want_ to keep to the first compact?"

"Of course I do; I _shall_ keep to it."

"No," he said, quietly.

She started, clasped and unclasped her hands.

"You are only tempting us," she said. "It may look for a moment like a possible thing--it isn't."

"It is perfectly possible if we are not superst.i.tious. The new claim brings a new insight, a new wisdom."

She s.h.i.+vered.

"Think of founding a new existence on broken faith, on cowardice."

"You know you are talking sheer superst.i.tion."

She seemed not to hear.

"Do you realize," he went on, "that many people, enlightened enough to admit we have a right to do as we like with ourselves, would deny we had a right to deprive another--"

"You talk as if you didn't know a girl 'deprives' a whole possible family of life every time she says 'No' to a man who asks her to marry him. No use to talk to me, I'm a hardened criminal."

She made a nervous, mocking motion to get up and cut the colloquy short.

Ethan stopped her with a gesture of grave rebuke.

"Do you know that, if you had committed all the crimes in the calendar, a capital sentence could not be executed upon you now."

"Think of it!" she said, with indignant eyes. "They'd not only keep the sword hanging over a poor wretch all that time--they'd let her horror and shrinking stamp itself on an innocent creature. Oh, man's justice is an odd jumble!"

"If public justice falls short, what of mine to you?" He walked a few paces up and down. "I've never seen you like this before, Val."

"I've never before lived through such days," she said, very low.

"You deceived me with your calmness."

"You see how necessary it was--you wouldn't have understood that I didn't want to break my oath."

"I understand now." He stopped before her with haggard face. "I come here into a girl's happy life--I take away her content, I snuff out her ambitions, I give her nothing in return. For years I bar the way to marriage--for all time I've shut the door on music. It is _my_ fault you were allowed no outlet for your energies. I force you back on a barren love for a life-interest, and saying, 'There is only this,' I add, 'Accept it at your peril.' I am filled with horror at the thought of the way I've marred and broken a beautiful life."

"Oh, dear one, don't, don't! It's not true, you know. It wasn't really beautiful till you came."

He shook his head.

"Do you want to make it possible for me ever to think of myself without intolerable loathing?"

"Dear, dear!" She held out her hands.