Madcap Part 58

"Yes--the truth. That is all that matters, isn't it? But that play--shall I ever forget it?"

"Sh--child. You must forget. A lie never lives."

"I will forget. I don't care--now. Let them say what they choose.

But I _did_ suffer, Philidor."

"And I. You were cruel, dear."

"I had to be cruel. I feared that you--that I--"

She paused and he questioned gravely.

"I feared that you, too, might have misjudged me--there in the woods at S?es--that I had cheapened myself to you--that I had been unwomanly."

"Hermia!"

"I don't know what possessed me after Olga appeared. She poisoned the very air with doubt. I was desperate. I didn't seem to care what happened. I don't know what I wanted. I think if you had taken me then and held me--as you do now--held me close to you and had not let me go, as you did, you might have had me to do as you willed. But you relinquished me--"

"I had to, dear."

"Yes, I understand now. I couldn't then. I wanted to hurt you--as I was hurt. Your sanity made me desperate. I couldn't understand why you should be so sane while I was not. You were greater than I--and though I loved you for it (O Philidor, how I loved you!) I meant that you should pay for my heart-throbs--that you should pay for Olga--for everything."

"I have paid."

"Forgive me. I suffered doubly in knowing that you suffered. I fled from you and hid my heart as a miser would buy his treasure. But your letters, forwarded from Paris, followed me. O Philidor! I did not read them--not at first. I saw Olga telling that story at the dinner table and my pride revolted. I put them away--unopened, and kept them concealed--from others, from myself and tried to forget them. I couldn't. They were you. I would take them out and look at them. I slept with them under my pillow. At last I could stand it no longer.

I took them and disappeared for a whole day from the rest of my party.

I read them alone on the summit of a mountain." She broke off with a sigh. "Ah me! If you had come to me there you would not need to have pleaded, Philidor."

"My Hermia!"

"You were with me that day. Didn't you know it?"

"I was with you every day, child."

She smiled happily.

"When I got down to Evian at nightfall they were searching for me.

They thought that I had fallen and been killed. They reproved me. I was calm and smiling, my spirit still soaring to you across the distances. I had made up my mind to go to you the next day."

"Oh, if you had--!"

"In the morning," she went on, "came your letter telling me that you were sailing for New York. It wasn't like the other letters. You were reproachful and you were going away from me. It chilled me a little--after the day before. Olga's face interposed--again. And so I let you go. You see I'm telling you everything."

"Go on, dear."

"I got no more of your letters for a time--for a long time--"

"I wrote you--"

"Yes--from New York. There was some mistake. I didn't get those letters until long after--until I reached New York--until after I had seen you. Meanwhile, I feared--that you had cooled--that Olga had done something to change you--"

"Not that--"

"I feared her. I knew then that she was capable of anything. I heard that she was again in New York and sensed that you must have seen her--"

"I did see her," he put in grimly.

"I didn't know what had happened. I made up my mind to ignore her--to ignore _you_--to forget you and to make you forget, if I could, what had happened."

"That was impossible."

"I knew it, but I tried. O my dear, if you had known my pains at making you suffer! It was hard. But I did it. When you came to the house--"

"Don't speak of that," he muttered. "It was not Hermia that I saw."

"Not _this_ Hermia. It was a girl that even _I_ did not know. I had rehea.r.s.ed that conversation and I carried it through to the end."

"The end--of all things, it seemed."

She drew more closely into the shelter of his arms and drew his lips down to hers.

"Yes--but we shall make a new beginning----And then," she went on, after a moment, "I saw Olga and cut her. I hadn't meant to--but I couldn't help it. The sight of her turned me to ice. And Pierre de Folligny--" She stopped again, her brows tangling. "That man! He remembered me. He presumed. He was odious. I had the butler show him the door. I--I wasn't very wise, I think. But I couldn't, Philidor,--I simply _couldn't_ temporize with a man of his caliber."

"D--n him!" said Markham.

"He told--I think--of Olga did--"

"It was De Folligny," he groaned. "But I couldn't do anything. That would have made things worse."

"Oh, yes--and then the play--that dreadful play! That was Olga's doing. I was _there_, Philidor, at Rood's Knoll. I saw it all.

Listened in terror to every word of the dreadful sacrilege. It _was_ sacrilege!--to see my love and yours pictured the dreadful thing that that love was. I got out somehow. They were talking of me--lightly.

I heard them; as they talked of--of other women who do not know right from wrong--as they would have talked of that dreadful Frenchwoman who--who was killed."

She was sobbing gently on his shoulder, her slender body quivering and drawing closer. "Oh, I have paid--paid in full for my fault--"

He soothed her, but she started back, holding him at arm's length, her eyes the more lovely through their tears, "But I regret nothing. I would suffer more, if I might, to know what I know. I have learned the meaning of life, Philidor. I bless my pain for the new meaning it has given my joy. I bless _your_ pain even, dear, for the new meaning it has given your unselfishness. You thought only of me, of my happiness when I had paid you only misery."

"There shall be no more pain," he murmured. "There is no room for it.

Joy shall crowd it out."

"Will you forgive me?" she asked.

"I'll try," he smiled. "Will you promise never to run away from me again?

"Where should I run?"

He meditated a moment and then said with a smile: