The Best Short Stories of 1920 | Page 8

must love me
and be very patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long
time you have taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will
love you tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me, or I
would not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I am
so glad our marriage time is near at hand.'
"Now you see clearly enough into what a mess I had got. In my office,
after I read my fiancée's letter, I became at once very resolute and
strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud
of the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right
away I felt concerning her as I had been feeling, about myself before I

found out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong
resolution that I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned
to run in to see my fiancée. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself. 'The
beauty of her character has saved me from myself. I will go home now
and send the other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to
my servant and told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment
that evening and I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at
home.
"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I
told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming to my
place on the evening before the day I am to be married?' I put the
telephone down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of
the apartment it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the
woman. I cannot be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an
explanation,' I said to myself.
"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let
her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had any
intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but she
did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that everything
she did that evening was soft and quiet but very determined and quick.
Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just within the
door, where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour. My hands
were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her eyes
looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in the
store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her
into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer
trembled. I felt very happy and strong.
"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you
what the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other
woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of
your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not
started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is
inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the
tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of

her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to
me at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.
"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to
me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the
woman who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case,
that is not true. On that evening I went to my fiancée at nine, as she
had asked me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the
other woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been
thinking that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's
wife I would not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one
thing or the other with me,' I had said to myself.
"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled
with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I
muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other
woman, the