Shadows of Flames Part 105

in your own house ... you treat her like that ... your own kinswoman....

Oh, yes! I know.... But by bringing-up she is your kinswoman.... You do this ... you do this...." She was stammering with the heavy heart-beats that again suffocated her. "And then ... to _me_ ... you speak.... Oh, let me breathe!" she cried, and stood up as if throwing off some intolerable weight.

Loring stood changing from red to white, from white to red. His eyes shone sullenly. His head was lowered in that way she knew. He looked up at her defiantly from under the beautiful arch of the brows that she had once loved. "Well?... And what course has your superiority mapped out for me?" he sneered finally.

She said in a cold voice:

"I have 'mapped out' nothing. But there seems only one way to me.... To be quite truthful about it all. Then ... to act truly."

He gave his ugly little laugh.

"Perhaps you'll favour me with your ideas on 'acting truly'?"

"I will. You love this girl...."

"d.a.m.n it! I've told you I hate her!" he broke out violently.

She tried hard to keep the contempt out of her voice. "You can hardly expect me to accept that, Morris," she said gravely.

"Why not? You're so precious anxious for the truth. That's the truth.

Now you say you won't 'accept' it...."

Sophy sank wearily into her chair again. She found that it made her giddy to stand. Her hands were damp and cold. She felt physically ill.

She covered her eyes for a moment, and in the momentary darkness her truest self whispered to her.

She uncovered her face and looked at him with that first gentle, quiet, to him inexplicable, look.

"Morris," she said softly, "don't you see? I want to be your friend--really your friend in all this. I ... I understand how it has happened. Yes ... better than you do perhaps. We ... we have drifted apart. Oh, don't think I'm reproaching you----" she interrupted herself proudly. "If you'll look back ... to ... to ... that time ... in Virginia. When...."

She couldn't go on for a moment.

"When that glamour was on us both," she continued. "You'll remember that I told you.... I warned you ... that it _was_ glamour ... that some day ... some day...."

No. She could not go on. Love--when it has been real, if only for an hour--is always sacred. She sat very white, her chin in her hand, her eyes downcast.

There was all about her the atmosphere of that wild, windy night when, as she sat alone in the old house, he had rushed in to her like the very Magic of Youth....

Still looking down, she said presently:

"Won't you even let me be your true friend, Morris?"

Very huskily he said:

"Well.... I ought to be grateful for that much...."

It was all horribly sad. She felt faint with the wasteful, useless sadness of it all.

"What did you think of ... of proposing?" he asked, still in that husky, beaten voice.

Sophy's own voice trembled a little when she spoke.

"I think this, Morris," she said. "I think your life ought to be free ... to offer to Belinda."

"'Free'? ... to offer ... '_free_'?" he gasped.

"I am willing to set you free...." she said.

There was silence. It lasted so long that she lifted her eyes to his face. The look on it appalled her ... a sort of blasted look, as though rage had struck like lightning.

"Are you ... are _you_...." he tried to get out his question. Choked on it. He tore it out finally. "Are _you_ suggesting _divorce_ to me?"

"It is the only straight, honest way out of this ... this tangle, Morris."

"You ... _you_ ... suggest divorce? Like that? Coolly ... _d.a.m.ned_ coolly ... as you might suggest a drive ... a walk...? Divorce?...

_You?_"

He jumped up, his face all distorted. He seized the chair in which he had been sitting and dashed it with all his might against the wall. It fell in splinters.

"h.e.l.l!" he almost sobbed at her. "Do you too take me for a fool?... 'A common or garden fool'?... Do you, I say?... Now, then! Out with it! I'm a soft fool you think. Hey?-- The sort of little, tame husband-fool that never feels his budding antlers, till he sheds 'em in the divorce court?

Hey? That's what ... is it? You think so?..."

He was so incoherent with fury, that she could scarcely understand half of what he said. The saliva churned at the corners of his mouth in the frenzy of his sudden madness of jealous rage and suspicion. He'd show her he saw through her n.o.ble unselfishness. She and her dago!

Sophy stared at him in horror. She thought that his brain had given way.

"Morris ... Morris...." she kept murmuring.

"O _G.o.d_...." he choked. "G.o.d ... G.o.d that you should take me for a sucking fool--you and your dago ... you and your little Lombard mucker.... You!--To _me_!... for _my_ sake!... 'Divorce'!... Set _me_ free!..."

He dropped across a table, hugging himself, shivering with stridulant, choked laughter. He shook with it--was convulsed with it as with throes of nausea. Long, steady drinking had its meet effect. He was hysterical bedlamite--unmanned man--raging tiger of jealousy ... all these things in one ... dreadful to see ... to hear....

Sophy stood gathered up and back from him. She looked dead--as though she had died standing.

With Loring, the paroxysm pa.s.sed. He clung to the table as to the taffrail of a reeling ship. The whole world seemed waving like a flag.

Then suddenly, in a high, clear, toneless voice, Sophy said:

"I do not now offer to set you free.... I demand to be set free myself...."

She went swiftly into the next room. He heard the key turn in the lock.

He went on clinging to the table which seemed to swing him to and fro.

He remembered hearing that rage kills sometimes. He thought for long moments that he was dying.

For some days after he was, indeed, seriously ill.

x.x.xV