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“You know me well enough, Eleanor, to realize that I’m in earnest when I say that while I live the man has yet to be born who can take something of mine away from me.”

Camilla gestured passionately.

“In other words: while growling hard at the dog who approached your bone, you have no hesitation in stealing from another!” The accumulated bitterness of years of repression spoke in the taunt.

Across the little man’s face there fell an impenetrable mask, like the armor which dropped about an ancient ship of war before the shock of battle.

“I’m not on trial. I’ve not changed my name–” he nodded significantly toward the view beyond the open door,–“and sought seclusion.”

Again the bitterness of memory prompted Camilla to speak the harshest words of her life.

“No, you hadn’t the decency. It was more pleasure to thrust your shame daily in my face.”

Arnold’s color paled above the dark beard line; but the woman took no heed.

“Why did you wait a year,” continued the bitter voice, “to end in–this? If it must have been–why not before?”

“I repeat, I’m not on trial. If you’ve anything to say, I’ll listen.”

Something new in the man’s face caught Camilla’s attention, softened the tone of her voice.

“I’ve only this to say. You’ve asked for an explanation and a promise; but I can give you neither. If there ever comes a time when I feel they’re due you, and I’m able to comply, I’ll give them both gladly.” The absent look of the past returned to her eyes. “Even if I wished, I couldn’t give you an explanation now. I can’t make myself understand the contradiction. Somehow, knowing you so long, your beliefs crept insistently into my loneliness. It seems hideous now, but I was honest then. I believed them, too. I don’t blame you; I only pity you. You were the embodiment of protest against the established, of the non-responsibility of the individual, of skepticism in everything. Your eternal ‘why’ covered my horizon. Every familiar thing came to bear a question I couldn’t answer. My whole life seemed one eternal doubt. One thing I’d never known, and I questioned it most of all; the one thing I know now to be the truth,–the greatest truth in the world.” For an instant the present crowded the past from Camilla’s mind, but only for an instant. “Whatever I was at the time, you’d made me–with your deathless ‘why.’ When I signed the obligation of that day, I believed it was of my own free will; but I know now it was you who wrote it for both of us–you, with your perpetual interrogation. I don’t accuse you of doing this deliberately, maliciously. We were both deceived; but none the less the fact remains.” A shadow, almost of horror, passed over her face.

“Time passed, and though you didn’t know, I was in Hell. Reason told me I was right. Instinct, something, called me a drag. I tried to compromise, and we were married. Then, for the first time, came realization. We were the best of friends,–but only friends.”

“You wonder how I knew. I didn’t tell you then. I couldn’t. I could only feel, and that not clearly. The shadow of your ‘why’ was still dark upon me. What I vaguely felt then, though, I know now; as I recognize light or cold or pain.” Her voice assumed the tone of one who speaks of mysteries; slow, vibrant. “In every woman’s mind the maternal instinct should be uppermost; before everything, before God,–unashamed, inevitable. It’s unmistakably the distinction of a good woman from a bad. The choosing of the father of her child is a woman’s unfailing test of love.”

The face of the man before her dropped into his hands, but she did not notice.

“Gropingly I felt this, and the knowledge came almost as an inspiration. It gave a clue to–“

“Stop!” The man’s eyes blazed, as he leaped from his chair. “Stop!”