The Business of Life

"Home."

"Home!" she repeated, beginning to cry again. "Why do you call his house 'home'? It's no more my home than he is my husband – "

"He is your husband! What do you mean by talking this way?"

"He isn't my husband. I told him I didn't care for him when he asked me to marry him. He only grinned. It was a perfectly cold-blooded bargain. I didn't sell him everything!"

"You married him."

"Partly."

"What!"

She flushed crimson.

"I sold him the right to call me his wife and to – to make me so if I ever came to – care for him. That was the bargain – if you've got to know. The clergy did their part – "

"Do you mean – "

"Yes!" she said, exasperated. "I mean that it is no marriage, in spite of law and clergy. And it never will be, because I hate him!"

Desboro looked at her in utter contempt.

"Do you know," he said, "what a rotten thing you have done?"

"Rotten!"

"Do you think it admirable?"

"I didn't sell myself wholesale. It might have been worse."

"You are wrong. Nothing worse could have happened."

"Then I don't care what else happens to me," she said, drawing off her gloves and unpinning her hat. "I shall not go back to him."

"You can't stay here."

"I will," she said excitedly. "I'm going to break with him – whether or not I can count on your loyalty to me – " Her voice broke childishly, and she bowed her head.

He caught his lip between his teeth for a moment. Then he said savagely:

"You ought not to have come here. There isn't one single thing to excuse it. Besides, you have just reminded me of my loyalty to you. Can't you understand that that includes your husband? Also, it isn't in me to forget that I once asked you to be my wife. Do you think I'd let you stand for anything less after that? Do you think I'm going to blacken my own face? I never asked any other woman to marry me, and this settles it – I never will! You've finished yourself and your sex for me!"

She was crying now, her head in her hands, and the bronze-red hair dishevelled, sagging between her long, white fingers.

He remained aloof, knowing her, and always afraid of her and of himself together – a very deadly combination for mischief. And she remained bowed in the attitude of despair, her lithe young body shaken.

His was naturally a lightly irresponsible disposition, and it came very easily for him to console beauty in distress – or out of it, for that matter. Why he was now so fastidious with his conscience in regard to Mrs. Clydesdale he himself scarcely understood, except that he had once asked her to marry him; and that he knew her husband. These two facts seemed to keep him steady. Also, he rather liked her burly husband; and he had almost recovered from the very real pangs which had pierced him when she suddenly flung him over and married Clydesdale's millions.

One of the logs had burned out. He rose to replace it with another. When he returned to the sofa, she looked up at him so pitifully that he bent over and caressed her hair. And she put one arm around his neck, crying, uncomforted.

"It won't do," he said; "it won't do. And you know it won't, don't you? This whole business is dead wrong – dead rotten. But you mustn't cry, do you hear? Don't be frightened. If there's trouble, I'll stand by you, of course. Hush, dear, the house is full of servants. Loosen your arms, Elena! It isn't a square deal to your husband – or to you, or even to me. Unless people have an even chance with me – men or women – there's nothing dangerous about me. I never dealt with any man whose eyes were not wide open – nor with any woman, either. Cary's are shut; yours are blinded."

She sprang up and walked to the fire and stood there, her hands nervously clenching and unclenching.

"When I tell you that my eyes are wide open – that I don't care what I do – "

"But your husband's eyes are not open!"

"They ought to be. I left a note saying where I was going – that rather than be his wife I'd prefer to be your – "

"Stop! You don't know what you're talking about – you little idiot!" he broke out, furious. "The very words you use don't mean anything to you – except that you've read them in some fool's novel, or heard them on a degenerate stage – "

"My words will mean something to him, if I can make them!" she retorted hysterically, " – and if you really care for me – "

Through the throbbing silence Desboro seemed to see Clydesdale, bulky, partly sober, with his eternal grin and permanently-flushed skin, rambling about among his porcelains and enamels and jades and ivories, like a drugged elephant in a bric-a-brac shop. And yet, there had always been a certain kindly harmlessness and good nature about him that had always appealed to men.

He said, incredulously: "Did you write to him what you have just said to me?"

"Yes."

"You actually left such a note for him?"

"Yes, I did."

The silence lasted long enough for her to become uneasy. Again and again she lifted her tear-swollen face to look at him, where he stood before the fire, but he did not even glance at her; and at last she murmured his name, and he turned.

"I guess you've done for us both," he said. "You're probably right; nobody would believe the truth after this."

She began to cry again silently.

He said: "You never gave your husband a chance. He was in love with you and you never gave him a chance. And you're giving yourself none, now. And as for me" – he laughed unpleasantly – "well, I'll leave it to you, Elena."

"I – I thought – if I burned my bridges and came to you – "

"What did you think?"

"That you'd stand by me, Jim."

"Have I any other choice?" he asked, with a laugh. "We seem to be a properly damned couple."

"Do – do you care for any other woman?"

"No."

"Then – then – "

"Oh, I am quite free to stand the consequences with you."