She heard unmoved his cajoling, confident expostulation. That was a nice way to meet a man when he’d come—she brushed aside his embracing arm with a movement of her shoulder. “We’d better sit down. Pardon me.” She took the chair he had left, her own chair, from which she had handled so many land-buyers.
“God, but you’re hard!” His accusation held an unwilling admiration. She saw that the way to lose this man was to cling to him; he wanted her now, because she had no need of him. Memories of all the wasted love, the self-surrender and faith she had given him, for which he had not cared at all, which he had never seen or known how to value, came back to her in a flood of pain. Her lips tightened, and looking at him across the desk, she said:
“Do you think so? I’m sorry. But—just what do you want?”
He met her eyes for a moment, and she saw his effort to adjust himself, his falling back upon his old self-confidence in bending other minds to his desires. He could not believe that anyone would successfully resist him, that any woman was impervious to his charm. And suddenly she felt hard, hard through and through. She wanted to hurt him cruelly; she wanted to tear and wound his self-centered egotism, to reach somewhere a sensitive spot in him and stab it.
He wanted her, he said. He wanted his wife. She heard in his voice a note she knew, the deep, caressing tone he kept for women, and she saw that he used it skilfully, aware of its effect.
He had gone through hell. “Through hell,” he repeated vibrantly. He did not expect her to understand. She was a woman. She could not realize the tortures of remorse, the agonies of soul, the miseries of those years without her. He sketched them for her, with voice and gestures appealing to her pity. He had been a brute to her; he had been a yellow cur to leave her so. He admitted it, magnificently humble.
He had promised himself that he would not come back to her until he was on his feet again. He had reformed. He was going to work. He was going to cut out the booze. Already he had the most glittering prospects. Fer de Leon, the king of patent-medicine men, was going to put on a tremendous campaign in Australia. Fer de Leon had absolute confidence in him; he could sign a contract at any time for fifteen thousand a year.
He wanted her to come with him. He needed her. With her beside him he could resist all temptations. She was an angel; she was the only woman he had ever really loved and respected. With her he could do anything. Without her he would be hopeless, heartsick. God only knew what would happen. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you? You won’t turn me down. You’ll give me another chance?”
She was looking down at her hands, unable any longer to read what her eyes saw in him. Her hands lay folded on the edge of the desk, composed and quiet, not moved at all by the sick trembling that was shaking her. The desire to hurt him was gone. His appeal to her pity had dissolved it in contempt.
“I’m sorry,” she said with effort. “I hope you—you will go on and—succeed in everything. I know you will, of course.” She said it in a tone of strong conviction, trying now to save his egotism. She did not want to hurt him. “I know you have done the best you could. It’s all right. It isn’t anything you’ve done. I don’t blame you for that. But it seems to me—”
“Good God! How can you be so cold?” he cried.
Even her hands were shaking now, and she quieted them by clasping them together. “Perhaps I am cold,” she said. “You see already that we couldn’t—make a success of it. It isn’t your fault. We just don’t—suit each other. We never did really. It was all a mistake.” Her throat contracted.
“So it’s another man!” he said. “I might have known it.”
“No.” She was quiet even under the sneer. “It isn’t that. But there was never anything to build on between you and me. You think you want me now only because you can’t have me. So it will not really hurt you if I get a divorce. And I’d rather do that. Then we can both start again—with clean slates. And I hope you will succeed. And have everything you want.” She rose, one hand heavily on the desk, and held out the other. “Goodbye.”
Her attempt to end the scene with frankness and dignity failed. He could not believe that he had lost this object he had attempted to gain. His wounded vanity demanded that he conquer her resistance. He recalled their memories of happiness, tried to sway her with pictures of the future he would give her, appealed to generosity, to pity, to admiration. He played upon every chord of the feminine heart that he knew.
She stood immovable, sick with misery, and saw behind his words the motives that prompted them, self-love, self-assurance, baffled antagonism. She felt again, as something outside herself, the magnetism, the force like an electric current, that had conquered her once.
“I really wish you would go,” she said. “All this gains nothing for either of us.” At last he went.
“You women are all alike. Don’t think you’ve fooled me. It’s another man with more money. If I were not a gentleman you wouldn’t get away so easily with this divorce talk. But I am. Go get it!” The door crashed behind him.
She did not move for a long moment. Then she went into the inner office, locked the door behind her, and sat down. Her glance
