“Have you any idea how you were hurt? Or why?”
“No. There’s a certain proportion of accidents that occur at all these places, isn’t there?”
“This was not an accident.”
“No?”
“The branch of a tree was thrown out in front of the sled to send us over the bank. It was murder, if intention is crime.”
After a brief silence—
“Somebody who wished to kill you, or me?”
“Both of us, I believe. It was done by a woman—a girl, Anita. A girl I had been living with.”
A brutal way to tell her, no doubt, but admirably courageous. For he was quivering with dread when he said it —the courage of the man who faces a cannon. And here, where a less-poised woman would have broken into speech, Anita took the refuge of her kind and was silent. Stewart watched her as best he could in the darkness, trying to gather further courage to go on. He could not see her face, but her fingers, touching the edge of the chair, quivered.
“May I tell you the rest?”
“I don’t think I want to hear it.”
“Are you going to condemn me unheard?”
“There isn’t anything you can say against the fact?”
But there was much to say, and sitting there in the darkness he made his plea. He made no attempt to put his case. He told what had happened simply; he told of his loneliness and discomfort. And he emphasized the lack of sentiment that prompted the arrangement.
Anita spoke then for the first time: “And when you tried to terminate it she attempted to kill you!”
“I was acting the beast. I brought her up here, and then neglected her for you.”
“Then it was hardly only a business arrangement for her.”
“It was at first. I never dreamed of any thing else. I swear that, Anita. But lately, in the last month or two, she—I suppose I should have seen that she—”
“That she had fallen in love with you. How old is she?”
“Nineteen.”
A sudden memory came to Anita, of a slim young girl, who had watched her with wide, almost childish eyes.
“Then it was she who was in the compartment with you on the train coming up?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
“In Vienna. I have not heard from her. Byrne, the chap who came up to see me after the—after the accident, sent her away. I think he’s looking after her. I haven’t heard from him.”
“Why did you tell me all this?”
“Because I love you, Anita. I want you to marry me.”
“What! After that?”
“That, or something similar, is in many men’s lives. They don’t tell it, that’s the difference. I ‘m not taking any credit for telling you this. I’m ashamed to the bottom of my soul, and when I look at your bandaged arm I’m suicidal. Peter Byrne urged me to tell you. He said I couldn’t get away with it; some time or other it would come out. Then he said something else. He said you’d probably understand, and that if you married me it was better to start with a clean slate.”
No love, no passion in the interview now. A clear statement of fact, an offer—his past against hers, his future with hers. Her hand was steady now. The light in the priest’s house had been extinguished. The chill of the mountain night penetrated Anita’s white furs; and set her—or was it the chill?—to shivering.
“If I had not told you, would you have married me?”
“I think so. I’ll be honest, too. Yes.”
“I am the same man you would have married. Only—more honest.”
“I cannot argue about it. I am tired and cold.”
Stewart glanced across the valley to where the cluster of villas hugged the mountainside There was a light in his room; outside was the little balcony where Marie had leaned against the railing and looked down, down. Some of the arrogance of his new virtue left the man. He was suddenly humbled. For the first time he realized a part of what Marie had endured in that small room where the light burned.
“Poor little Marie!” he said softly.
The involuntary exclamation did more for him than any plea he could have made. Anita rose and held out her hand.
“Go and see her,” she said quietly. “You owe her that. We’ll be leaving here in a day or so and I’ll not see you again. But you’ve been honest, and I will be honest, too. I—I cared a great deal, too.”
“And this has killed it?”
