"I who love you with all my heart and mind and soul--I am not free to love you."
"You aren"t free--!"
"I.... No."
After several moments, during which he fought vainly with his inability to go on, she resumed her examination with a manner aloof and yet determined:
"You"ve told me so much, I think you can hardly refuse to tell more."
"I," he stammered--"I am already married."
She gave a little, stifled cry--whether of pain or horror or of indignation he could not tell.
"I"m sorry--I--" he began.
"Don"t you think you might have thought of this before?"
"I ... you don"t understand--"
"Are you in the habit of declaring yourself first and confessing later?... Don"t answer, if you don"t want to. I"ve no real right to know. I asked out of simple curiosity."
"If you"d only listen to me!" he broke out suddenly. "The thing"s so strange, so far off--dreamlike--that I forget it easily."
"So it would seem," she put in cruelly.
"Please hear me!"
"Surely you must see I am listening, Mr. Whitaker."
"It was several years ago--nearly seven. I was on the point of death--had been told to expect death within a few months.... In a moment of sentimental sympathy--I wasn"t at all myself--I married a girl I"d never seen before, to help her out of a desperate sc.r.a.pe she"d got into--meaning simply to give her the protection of my name. She was in bad trouble.... We never lived together, never even saw one another after that hour. She had every reason to think me dead--as I should have been, by rights. But now she knows that I"m alive--is about to sue for a divorce.... Now you know just what sort of a contemptible hound I am, and why it was so hard to tell you."
After a long pause, during which neither stirred, she told him, in a faint voice: "Thank you."
She moved toward the house.
"I throw myself upon your mercy--"
"Do you?" she said coolly, pausing.
"If you will forgive me--"
"Oh, I forgive you, Mr. Whitaker. My heart is really not quite so fragile as all this implies."
"I didn"t mean that--you know I didn"t. I"m only trying to a.s.sure you that I won"t bother you--with this trouble of mine--again. I don"t want you to be afraid of me."
"I am not."
The words were terse and brusque enough; the accompanying swift gesture, in which her hand rested momentarily on his arm as if in confidence approaching affection, he found oddly contradictory.
"You don"t see--anything?" she said with an abrupt change of manner, swinging to the north.
He shaded his eyes, peering intently through the night, closely sweeping its encompa.s.sing obscurity from northwest to southeast.
"Nothing," he said, dropping his hand. "If there were a boat heading this way, we couldn"t help seeing her lights."
"Then there"s no use waiting?"
"I"m afraid not. They"d hardly come to-night, anyway; more likely by daylight, if they should happen to grow suspicious of our beacon."
"Then I think I"ll go to bed. I"m very, very tired, in spite of my sleep on the sands. That didn"t rest me, really."
"Of course."
"And you--?"
"Oh, I"m all right."
"But what are you going to do?"
"Why--keep the fire going, I presume."
"Is it necessary, do you think? Or even worth while?"
He made a doubtful gesture.
"I wish," she continued--"I wish you"d stay in the house. I--I"m really a bit timid: unnerved, I presume. It"s been, you know, rather a harrowing experience. Anything might happen in a place like this...."
"Oh, certainly," he agreed, something constrained. "I"d feel more content, myself, to know I was within call if anything should alarm you."
They returned to the kitchen.
In silence, while Whitaker fidgeted about the room, awkward and unhappy, the girl removed a gla.s.s lamp from the shelf above the sink, a.s.sured herself that it was filled, and lighted it. Then, over her shoulder:
"I hope you don"t mean to stay up all night."
"I--well, I"m really not sleepy."
"Oh, but you are," she contradicted calmly.
"Honestly; I slept so long down there on the beach--"
"Please don"t try to deceive me. I know that slumbers like those--of exhaustion--don"t rest one as they should. Besides, you show how tired you are in every gesture, in the way you carry yourself, in your very eyes."
"You"re mistaken," he contended, looking away for fear lest his eyes were indeed betraying him. "Besides, I mean merely to sit up here, to see that everything is all right."
"How should it be otherwise?" She laughed the thought away, yet not unkindly. "This island is as empty as a last-year"s bird"s-nest. What could happen to harm, or even alarm us--or me?"
"You never can tell--"