East Angels: A Novel

"I shall never see you again," Margaret answered, strangely. She had not seated herself in the chair he had placed for her; she stood with her hand resting upon its back.

"What do you mean?"

"All you have said I believe; I believe you would keep to it, carry it out. But with me it would be different – it would be too much pain; I would far rather not see you at all. I love you too much," she added. A burning blush covered her face and throat as she met his eyes. Then it faded suddenly to so deathly a white that his old fear rushed back upon him. He had almost forgotten this fear in the lapse of time; but these terrible waves of color and of pallor, these overwhelming emotions that made her unable to stand – they brought back to him the old conviction, "She has no strength, she will not be able to endure it; she will die!" He took her in his arms and laid her down upon the cushions of a couch, made sick at heart as he did so by the lightness of her weight. Anything but that – that she should go from earth forever; anything but that!

As he bent over her, his heart full of his dread, she looked up; she saw his fear.

"Why – I am not dying," she said, reassuringly, smiling for an instant with almost a mother's sweetness; "it is nothing, – only the faintness that very often seizes me; it has been so all my life, it amounts to nothing. And now will you go? And promise me not to come back?"

"Margaret – that is too much."

"It is the only way; surely I have shown you – told you – in all its shame, my weakness." And again came the burning blush.

He had knelt down beside her. "Weakness!" He bowed his head upon her hand.

"Go," she repeated softly.

"I cannot go!"

She tried to rise, but he prevented her. "Margaret!" he said.

"And must I always be the one?" She did rise, she moved from his grasping hands. "You talk about my dying —that would make me die, to have you pursue me, ungenerously, brutally, when I have already such hard pain to bear." With a step that swayed with her exhaustion she went towards the door. "I can only appeal to you, Evert," she said when she had reached it, looking back at him over her shoulder – "I can only appeal to you not to try to see me again. It will be the same with me always, and so I appeal to you for always. I shall never change; and I should never yield; so you can see that it will only make me suffer more."

She turned the latch. "Perhaps, sometime – the years that we give up to duty here – " She went hastily out.

They never met again.

EPILOGUE

It was eight years later at East Angels. Penelope and Middleton had come down for an afternoon visit; Betty was already there, Betty was generally there.

Dr. Kirby had just gone; he had brought to them the surprising tidings that Garda had turned her back upon her many admirers, and was about to bestow her hand upon Adolfo Torres.

The Doctor having gone, "I'll believe it when I see it!" Kate declared.

"But, Kate dear, you can't see all the way to Paris," said Betty.

That same evening, Margaret was sitting beside the lamp in the drawing-room, embroidering something which took her close attention.

Lanse had had his sofa drawn up to the open door of the little high balcony; he was smoking and looking out upon the moonlight.

He, too, spoke of the rumor about Garda. "I wonder why Evert didn't try for her?" he said.

His wife made no reply.

"Never married all this time – yet he was the very fellow for it! Steady, you know; good; a little stupid. It's outrageous the way he treats us – never coming here!"

Lanse was still crippled; but his face remained handsome. Save for his crippled condition, he appeared well and strong.

After a while he turned from the moonlight and sat idly watching his wife's hand move over her work. "Do you know that you've grown old, Madge, before your time?"

"Yes, I know it."

"Well – you're a good woman," said Lanse.

THE END