The Letter of the Contract | Page 5

that, notwithstanding a certain youthfulness of dress and bearing, this was a woman, not a girl. She was thirty-five at least, though the face was of the blond, wistful, Scandinavian type that fades from pallor to pallor without being perceptibly stamped by time. It was pallor like that of the white rose after it has passed the perfection of its bloom and before it has begun to wither.
Edith paused, still without drawing the misty eyes on herself.
"Do you know the people in that house?" she asked, at last.
The woman looked at her, not inquiringly or with much show of comprehension, but vaguely and as from a distance. Edith repeated the question.
The thin, rather bloodless lips parted. The answer seemed to come under compulsion from a stronger will: "I--I know--"
"You know the gentleman."
The pale thin lips parted again. After a second or two there was a barely audible "Yes."
"I'm his wife."
There was no sign on the woman's part either of surprise or of quickened interest.
There was only the brief hesitation that preceded all her responses.
"Are you?"
"You knew he was married, didn't you?"
"Oh yes."
"Have you known him long?"
"Eleven years."
"That's longer than I've known him."
"Oh yes."
"Do you know how long I've known him?"
"Oh yes."
"How do you know?"
"I remember."
"What makes you remember?"
"He told me."
"Why did he tell you?"
A glow of animation came into the dazed face. "That's what I don't know. I didn't care--much. He always said he would marry some day. It had nothing to do with me. We agreed on that from the first."
"From the first of--what?"
"From the first of everything."
Before putting the next question Edith took time to think. Because she was so startlingly cool and clear she was aware of feeling like one who stands with the revolver at her breast or the draught of cyanide in her hand, knowing that within a few seconds it may be too late to reconsider. And yet, she had never in her life felt more perfectly collected. She looked up the street and down the street, and across at her own house, of which the cheerful windows reflected the May sunshine. She bowed and smiled to a man on foot. She bowed and smiled two or three times to people passing in carriages. From the Park she could hear the shrieks of children on a merry-go-round; she could follow a catchy refrain from "The Belle of New York" as played by a band at a distance. Her sang-froid was extraordinary. It was while making the observation to herself that her question came out, before she had decided whether or not to utter it. She had no remorse for that, however, since she knew she couldn't have kept herself from asking it in the end. As well expect the man staggering to the outer edge of a precipice not to reel over.
"So it was--everything?"
In uttering the words she felt oddly shy. She looked down at the pavement, then, with a flutter of the eyelids, up at the woman.
But the woman herself showed no such hesitation.
"Oh yes."
"And is--still?"
And then the woman who was not a girl, but who was curiously like a child, suddenly took fright. Tears came to her eyes; there was a convulsive movement of the face. Edith could see she was a person who wept easily.
"I won't tell you any more."
The declaration was made in a tone of childish fretfulness.
Edith grew soothing. "I'm sorry if I've hurt your feelings. Don't mind speaking, because it doesn't make any difference to me--now."
The woman stared, the tears wet on her cheeks. "Don't you--love him?"
Edith was ready with her answer. It came firmly: "No."
"Didn't you--ever?"
This time Edith considered, answering more slowly. "I don't know. If I ever did--the thing is so dead--that I don't understand how it could ever have been alive."
The woman dried her eyes. "I don't see how you can help it."
"You can't help it, can you?" Edith smiled, with a sense of her own superiority. "I suppose that's the reason you come here. I've seen you before."
"Have you?"
"Yes; several times. And that is the reason, isn't it?--because you can't help loving him."
The woman's tears began to flow again. "It's because I don't know what else to do. When he doesn't come any more--"
"Oh, so he doesn't come."
"Not unless I make him. When he sees me here--"
"Well, what then?"
"He gets angry. He comes to tell me that if I do it again--"
"I see. But he comes. It brings him. That's the main thing, isn't it? Well, now that you've told me so much, I'll--I'll try to--to send him." She was struck with a new thought. "If you were to come in now--you could--you could wait for him."
The frightened look returned. "Oh, but he'd kill me!"
"Oh no, he wouldn't." She smiled again, with a sense of her superiority. "He wouldn't kill you when he knew