Part 48

She laughed--the sort of laugh one hears from a woman tossing in delirium. Madame heard it, up-stairs, and shuddered.

"Like a man!" Edith repeated, scornfully.

"Say it," he said, roughly. "Like a cad, if that's what you mean."

She laughed again, but with a different cadence. "Ask yourself first," she continued, "and then be honest with me. How would you feel?"

He shrugged his shoulders uneasily. "I admit it, but I'm willing to pay the price. I'll feel like a cad all the rest of my life, if I must, in order to have you."

"If a man has no self-respect," she retorted, "what can he expect from his----"

"Wife," breathed Alden, in a rapturous whisper. "Oh, Edith, say you will!"

She turned away, for she could not force herself to meet his eyes. Her little white hands clasped the edge of the table tightly.

"Have you thought of this?" he continued. "Suppose, for him, there is another woman----"

"There isn't," she denied. "I know that."

"Perhaps not in the sense you mean, but if he were free----?"

Edith drew a long breath. "I never thought of that."

Steadily the man pursued his advantage. "There must be some reason for his treating you as he does--for making you miserable. If, for any cause whatever, he wanted his freedom, would it make--any difference to you?"

She tapped her foot restlessly upon the floor. The atmosphere was surcharged with expectancy, then grew tense with waiting. Alden's eyes never swerved from her face.

"Have you any right, through principles of your own, which I thoroughly understand and respect, to keep a man bound who desires to be free?"

She swayed back and forth unsteadily. Alden assisted her to her chair and stood before her as she sat with her elbows upon her knees, her face hidden in her hands. With the precise observation one accords to trifles in moments of unendurable stress, he noted that two of the hooks which fastened her gown at the back of her neck had become unfastened and that the white flesh showed through the opening.

"If," said Alden, mercilessly, "he longs for his freedom, and the law permits him to take it, have you the right to force your principles upon him--and thus keep him miserable when he might otherwise be happy?"

The clock in the hall struck ten. The sound died into silence and the remorseless tick-tick went on. Outside a belated cricket fiddled bravely as he fared upon his way. The late moon flooded the room with light.

"Have you?" demanded Alden. He endeavoured to speak calmly, but his voice shook. "Answer me!"

Edith leaned back in her chair, white and troubled. "I don't know," she murmured, with lips that scarcely moved. "Before God, I don't know!"

The man went on pitilessly. "Don't you think you might find out? Before you condemn yourself and me to everlasting separation, don't you think you might at least ask him?"

"Yes," said Edith, slowly. "I might ask him. I'll go----"

"No, you needn't go. Can't you write?"

"Yes," she returned. "I can write."

All the emotion had gone from her voice. She said the words as meaninglessly as a parrot might.

"A letter has distinct advantages," remarked Alden, trying to speak lightly. "You can say all you want to say before the other person has a chance to put in a word."

"Yes," she agreed, in the same meaningless tone. "That is true."

"When," queried Alden, after a pause, "will you write?"