The One Woman Part 32

"About forty thousand dollars, I'm told. But I can't sell them.

They are not listed on the Exchange."

"I'll sell them for you, and by the end of the week have your money paying you an income of two hundred dollars a month. Send those two children home. You were not made for a school-teacher."

He looked at her with intensity, and she lowered her eyes in embarra.s.sment.

He sprang to his feet and walked swiftly to the window, and then came back and sat down beside her.

"Ruth," he said, impulsively, "it's no use in my trying to lie to you. We might as well understand one another at once. Of course, I know why you sent me away."

"Please, Morris, don't say any more," she pleaded.

"Yes, I will," he cried. "I love you. How could I keep you from seeing it in my eyes, when you were free at last, and I knew you might be mine?"

"You must not say this to me!" she protested.

He scowled and pursed his lips.

"I will. I am coming to this house when I please. I am going to give you the protection of my life. Every dollar I have, every moment of my time shall be yours if you need it. Ah, Ruth, how I have loved you through the desolate years since you sent me away!

Men have called me cold and selfish and ambitious, when I was lying awake at night eating my heart out dreaming of you. Every hour of work, every step I've climbed in the struggle of life, was with your face smiling on me from the past. All my hopes and ambitions I owe to you. The last message you spoke to me has been my guiding star. And when this man threw you from him as a cast-off garment--you, the beautiful queen of my soul--I would have killed him but for the fierce joy that now I could win you!"

She shook her head and a look of pain overspread her face.

"I know what you will say," he went on rapidly. "You need not protest. I will be patient. I will wait, but I will win you. I've sworn it by every oath that can bind the soul. I have no other purpose in life. I'm going to be the Governor of New York simply because I'm going to lift you from the shame this man has heaped upon you and make you the mistress of the Governor's mansion of this mighty state. Washington is but one step from Albany. My dream is for you. I will be to you the soul of deference and of tender honour. Your slightest wish will be my law, I will be silent if you command. But you cannot keep me away. If you leave me, I will follow you to the ends of the earth."

Ruth was softly crying.

"You must not cry, my love. I will make your life glorious, and light every shadow with the tenderness of a strong man's worship."

"And you love me like this when another has robbed my soul and body of their treasures and cast me aside?" she asked, wistfully.

His mouth suddenly tightened and his eyes flashed.

"Yes, and I'd love you so if you were broken and every trace of beauty gone. My love would be so warm and tender and true it would bring back the light into your eyes, the roses to your cheeks, and life even to your dead soul."

"How strange the ways of G.o.d!" she exclaimed, through her tears.

He looked at her with yearning tenderness.

"But you are not old or broken, Ruth. You have grown more beautiful.

This great sorrow has smoothed from your face every line of fretfulness and worry, and lighted it with the mystery and pathos of an unearthly beauty. It shines from your heroic soul until your whole being has come into harmony with it. I loved you in the past; I worship you now."

She turned on him a look of grat.i.tude.

"Worry and jealousy did exhaust me. I am glad you see in my face and form the change reflected from within. It is very sweet to me, this flattery you pour on my broken heart. I thank you, Morris.

You have restored my self-respect and given me strength. It is an honour to receive such love from an honest man. You must not think ill of me if I tell you I cannot love you."

"I'll make you!" he cried, fiercely. "You cannot cling to the memory of a man so base and false."

"He is my husband. I love him."

King flushed with anger.

"He is not your husband. He has deserted you, lured by the beauty of another woman."

A gleam of fire flashed from her eyes, melting into a soft light.

"Yes, I know, marriage is an ideal, the n.o.blest, most beautiful.

We have not yet attained its purity in life. Man is only struggling toward its perfection. We will not attain it by lowering the ideal, but by lifting up those who are struggling toward it. Another marriage while Frank lives would be possible for me only when I ceased to feel the meaning of sin and shame. I will never regret my life. I have cast all bitterness out of my heart. Better the happiness and pain of a glorious love than never to have known its joy. I have lived."

"And I will yet teach you to live more deeply," he firmly said.

She shook her head and looked at him sadly out of her dark eyes from which the storm had cleared at last. They beamed now with the steady light of a deep spiritual tenderness.

CHAPTER XXI

FREEDOM AND FELLOWSHIP

The six months abroad which Gordon and Kate had spent in love's dreaming and drifting had been the fulfilment to the man of the long-felt yearnings of his fierce subconscious nature.

To the woman it had been the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth. She had found herself, the real self, at whose first meeting in the kiss of a man she had trembled. She was no longer afraid.

The elemental clear-eyed G.o.ddess had taken possession. She had claimed her own, the throne of a queen, and the man who had dreamed of kingship was her courtier.

She was smiling at him in conscious power, her violet eyes flashing with mystery and magic, the sunlight of Italy gleaming through her dark red hair, her full lips half parted with dreamy tenderness, and her sinuous body moving with indolent grace.

"To be your slave is crown enough for man," he cried.

"And I am in heaven," she answered, proudly.

"Only, thus, in perfect freedom," he said, in rapture, "is the fulness of life. Beauty and harmony and love are of G.o.d. Surely this is communion with Him--the joy of embraces, the touch of sunlight, the glory of form and colour, the magic of music, the poetry of love, the ecstacy of pa.s.sion, the kiss of the senses--He is in all and over all."

"Can such happiness be eternal?" she asked, under her breath.

He kissed her softly.

"If G.o.d be infinite."

They reached New York the first week in November, and Gordon returned to his work with renewed zeal.

The success of his movement was a source of continued surprise and fear to the more thoughtful students of social and religious life.