"I can"t let you believe me different from what I am," replied she. "Not you. I supposed you guessed."
"Now I"ll always think of it--whenever I look at you. . . . I simply can"t believe it. . . . You spoke of it as if you weren"t ashamed."
"I"m not ashamed," she said. "Not before you. There isn"t anything I"ve done that I wouldn"t be willing to have you know.
I"d have told you, except that I didn"t want to recall it. You know that n.o.body can live without getting dirty. The thing is to want to be clean--and to try to get clean afterward--isn"t it?"
"Yes," he admitted, as if he had not been hearing. "I wish you hadn"t told me. I"ll always see it and feel it when I look at you."
"I want you to," said she. "I couldn"t love you as I do if I hadn"t gone through a great deal."
"But it must have left its stains upon you," said he. Again he stopped short in the street, faced her at the curb, with the crowd hurrying by and jostling them. "Tell me about it!" he commanded.
She shook her head. "I couldn"t." To have told would have been like tearing open closed and healed wounds. Also it would have seemed whining--and she had utter contempt for whining. "I"ll answer any question, but I can"t just go on and tell."
"You deliberately went and did--that?"
"Yes."
"Haven"t you any excuse, any defense?"
She might have told him about Burlingham dying and the need of money to save him. She might have told him about Etta--her health going--her mind made up to take to the streets, with no one to look after her. She might have made it all a moving and a true tale--of self-sacrifice for the two people who had done most for her. But it was not in her simple honest nature to try to shift blame. So all she said was:
"No, Rod."
"And you didn"t want to kill yourself first?"
"No. I wanted to live. I was dirty--and I wanted to be clean. I was hungry--and I wanted food. I was cold--that was the worst.
I was cold, and I wanted to get warm. And--I had been married--but I couldn"t tell even you about that--except--after a woman"s been through what I went through then, nothing in life has any real terror or horror for her."
He looked at her long. "I don"t understand," he finally said.
"Come on. Let"s go back to the hotel."
She walked beside him, making no attempt to break his gloomy silence. They went up to their room and she sat on the lounge by the window. He lit a cigarette and half sat, half lay, upon the bed. After a long time he said with a bitter laugh, "And I was so sure you were a good woman!"
"I don"t feel bad," she ventured timidly. "Am I?"
"Do you mean to tell me," he cried, sitting up, "that you don"t think anything of those things?"
"Life can be so hard and cruel, can make one do so many----"
"But don"t you realize that what you"ve done is the very worst thing a woman can do?"
"No," said she. "I don"t. . . . I"m sorry you didn"t understand.
I thought you did--not the details, but in a general sort of way. I didn"t mean to deceive you. That would have seemed to me much worse than anything I did."
"I might have known! I might have known!" he cried--rather theatrically, though sincerely withal--for Mr. Spenser was a diligent worker with the tools of the play-making trade. "I learned who you were as soon as I got home the night I left you in Carrolton. They had been telephoning about you to the village. So I knew about you."
"About my mother?" asked she. "Is that what you mean?"
"Oh, you need not look so ashamed," said he, graciously, pityingly.
"I am not ashamed," said she. But she did not tell him that her look came from an awful fear that he was about to make her ashamed of him.
"No, I suppose you aren"t," he went on, incensed by this further evidence of her lack of a good woman"s instincts. "I really ought not to blame you. You were born wrong--born with the moral sense left out."
"Yes, I suppose so," said she, wearily.
"If only you had lied to me--told me the one lie!" cried he.
"Then you wouldn"t have destroyed my illusion. You wouldn"t have killed my love."
She grew deathly white; that was all.
"I don"t mean that I don"t love you still," he hurried on. "But not in the same way. That"s killed forever."
"Are there different ways of loving?" she asked.
"How can I give you the love of respect and trust--now?"
"Don"t you trust me--any more?"
"I couldn"t. I simply couldn"t. It was hard enough before on account of your birth. But now---- Trust a woman who had been a--a--I can"t speak the word. Trust you? You don"t understand a man."
"No, I don"t." She looked round drearily. Everything in ruins.
Alone again. Outcast. Nowhere to go but the streets--the life that seemed the only one for such as she. "I don"t understand people at all. . . . Do you want me to go?"
She had risen as she asked this. He was beside her instantly.
"Go!" he cried. "Why I couldn"t get along without you."
"Then you love me as I love you," Said she, putting her arms round him. "And that"s all I want. I don"t want what you call respect. I couldn"t ever have hoped to get that, being born as I was--could I? Anyhow, it doesn"t seem to me to amount to much.
I can"t help it, Rod--that"s the way I feel. So just love me--do with me whatever you will, so long as it makes you happy. And I don"t need to be trusted. I couldn"t think of anybody but you."
He felt sure of her again, reascended to the peak of the moral mountain. "You understand, we can never get married. We can never have any children."
"I don"t mind. I didn"t expect that. We can _love_--can"t we?"
He took her face between his hands. "What an exquisite face it is," he said, "soft and smooth! And what clear, honest eyes!
Where is _it?_ Where _is_ it? It _must_ be there!"
"What, Rod?"
"The--the dirt."
She did not wince, but there came into her young face a deeper pathos--and a wan, deprecating, pleading smile. She said:
"Maybe love has washed it away--if it was there. It never seemed to touch me--any more than the dirt when I had to clean up my room."
"You mustn"t talk that way. Why you are perfectly calm! You don"t cry or feel repentant. You don"t seem to care."
"It"s so--so past--and dead. I feel as if it were another person. And it was, Rod!"