Part 57

"What!"

The silence was deadly.

"Do you know," she said deliberately, "that I believe you think I am mentally unsound. Do you?"

"I--you--" he began to stutter fearfully.

"Do you?"

"W-well, either you or I----"

"Nonsense! I thought that marriage ceremony was a miserably inadequate affair!... And I am hurt--grieved--amazed that you should do such a--a cowardly----"

"What!" he exclaimed, stung to the quick.

"Yes, it is cowardly to deceive a woman."

"I meant it kindly--supposing----"

"That I am mentally unsound? Why do you suppose that?"

"Because--Good Heavens--because in this century, and in this city, people who never before saw one another don't begin to talk of marrying----"

"I explained to you"--she was half crying now, and her voice broke deliciously--"I told you what I'd done, didn't I?"

"You said you had got a spark," he admitted, utterly bewildered by her tears. "Don't cry--please don't. Something is all wrong here--there is some terrible misunderstanding. If you will only explain it to me----"

She dried her eyes mechanically: "Come here," she said. "I don't believe I did explain it clearly."

And, very carefully, very minutely, she began to tell him about the psychic waves, and the instrument, and the new company formed to exploit it on a commercial basis.

She told him what had happened that morning to her; how her disobedience had cost her so much misery. She informed him about her father, and that florid and rotund gentleman's choleric character.

"If you are here when I tell him I'm married," she said, "he will probably frighten you to death; and that's one of the reasons why I wish to get it over and get you safely away before he returns. As for me, now that I know the worst, I want to get the worst over and--and live out my life quietly somewhere.... So now you see why I am in such a hurry, don't you?"

He nodded as though stunned, leaning there on the table, hands folded, head bent.

"I am so very sorry--for you," she said. "I know how you must feel about it. But if we are obliged to marry some time had we not better get it over and then--never--see--one another----"

He lifted his head, then stood upright.

Her soft lips were mute, but the question still remained in her eyes.

So, for a long while, they looked at each other; and the color under his cheekbones deepened, and the pink in her cheeks slowly became pinker.

"Suppose," he said, under his breath, "that I--wish--to return--to you?"

"I do not wish it----"

"Try."

"Try to--to wish for----"

"For my return. Try to wish that you also desire it. Will you?"