The Letter of the Contract | Page 7

in the face, shaking her head sadly. "No, Chip, I can't see that. If there had been any danger of it you wouldn't have--"
"But I couldn't help it. That's what you don't seem to understand."
"No; I'm afraid I don't."
"Would you try to understand--if I were to tell you?"
"I think I know already most of what you'd have to say. She's a woman whom you knew long before you knew me--and from whom you've never been able--"
"She was the daughter of a Swedish Lutheran pastor--dead now--established in New Jersey. In some way she drifted to the stage. Her name was Margarethe Kastenskjold. When she went on the stage she made it Maggie Clare. She had about as much talent for the theater as a paper doll. When I first knew her she was still getting odd jobs in third and fourth rate companies. Since then she hasn't played at all."
"I understand. There's been no need of it. She's quite well dressed."
"Let me go on, will you, Edith? I was about two or three and twenty then. She may have been a year or two older. She was living at that time with Billy Cummings. And somehow it happened--after Billy died--and she was stranded--"
She made an appealing gesture. "Please! I know how those things come about--or I can easily imagine. In your case--I'd--I'd rather not try." She got the words out somehow without breaking down.
"All the same, Edith," he went on, "you'll have to try--if you're going to do me anything like justice. If she hadn't been a refined, educated sort of girl, entirely at sea in her surroundings, and stranded--stranded for money, mind you, next door to going to starve--and no chance of getting a job, because she couldn't act a little bit--if it hadn't been for all that--"
"Oh, I know how you'd be generous!"
"Yes; but you don't know how I came to be a fool."
"Is there any reason why I should know--now that the fact is there?"
He looked at her steadily. "Edith! What are you made of?"
She returned his look. "I think--of stone. Up till to-day I've been a woman of flesh and blood; but I'm not sure that I am any longer. You can't kill the heart in a woman's body--and still expect her to feel."
"But, Edith--Edith darling--there's no reason why I should have killed the heart in your body when I never dreamed of doing you a wrong--that is, an intentional wrong," he corrected.
"You knew you were doing some woman a wrong--some future woman, the woman you'd marry--as far back as when you took up what Billy Cummings dropped from his dead hands--"
"Oh, that! That, dear, is nothing but the talk of feminist meetings. Men are men, and women are women. You can't make one law for them both. Besides, it's too big a subject to go into now."
"I'm not trying to. I wasn't thinking of men in general; I was thinking only of you."
"But, good Lord, Edith, you don't think I've been better than any one else, do you?"
Her forlorn smile made his heart ache. "I did think so. I dare say it was a mistake."
"It was a mistake. If you hadn't made it--"
"But it was at least a mistake one can understand. I could hardly be expected to take it for granted--whatever men may be, or may have the right to be--that the man who asked me to marry him--and who made me love him as I think few men have been loved by women--I could hardly take it for granted that he was already keeping--and had been keeping for years--and would keep for years to come--another--"
He moved impatiently. "But, I tell you, I couldn't get rid of her. I couldn't shake her off--or pay her off--or do any of the usual things. It was agreed between us before I married you--long before I married you--that everything was at an end. But, poor soul, she doesn't know what an agreement is. There's something lacking in her. She's always been like a child, and of late years she's been more so. If you knew her as I do you'd be sorry for her."
"Oh, I am sorry for her. Her whole mind is ravaged by suffering."
"I know it's my fault; but it isn't wholly or even chiefly my fault. A woman like that has no right to suffer. She lost the privilege of suffering when she became what she is. At any rate, she has no right to haunt like a shadow the man who's befriended her--"
"But, I presume, she's befriended him. And--and continues to befriend him--since that's the word."
He avoided her eyes, looking up the street and whistling tunelessly beneath his breath.
"I said--continues to befriend him," she repeated.
The tuneless whistling went on. She allowed him time to get the full effect of her meaning. As far as