The Profiteers Part 20

"The room I will arrange for in a minute or two," he promised. "That is quite easy. But to-morrow--what then?"

"I shall telephone home," she replied. "If that woman is still in the house, I shall go down into the country, and from there I shall write my lawyers and apply for a separation."

"So those are your plans," he remarked calmly.

"Yes. Can you suggest anything better?"

"I can suggest something a thousand times better."

She hesitated for a moment. Perhaps she was conscious of a certain alteration in his deportment, the ring of his last words, the slight but unusual air of emotional fervour with which he seemed somehow to have become endowed. A woman of curiously strong virginal instincts, she realised, perhaps for the first time, the approach of a great change in Wingate's att.i.tude towards her. Yet she could not keep from her lips the words which must bring his avowal.

"What do you mean?" she faltered.

"That you end it all," he advised firmly, "that you take your courage in both hands, that you do not return to your husband at all."

"Not return," she repeated, her eyes held by his.

"That you come to me," he went on, bending over the side of her chair.

"Needless, wonderful words, but I love you. You were the first woman in my life. You will be the last. I have been silent, as you know. I have waited for something like this, and I think the time has come."

"The time can never come," she cried despairingly.

"The time has come at least for me to tell you that I love you more than any woman on earth," he declared, "that I want to take care of you, to take you into my life, to build a wall of pa.s.sionate devotion around you, to keep you free from every trouble and every harm."

"Ah, dear friend, if it were but possible!" she murmured, holding his hands tightly.

"But it is possible," he insisted. "All that we need is courage. You owe nothing to your husband. You can leave him without remorse or a moment's shame. Your life just now is wasted,--a precious human life. I want you, Josephine. G.o.d knows how I want you!"

"You have my friends.h.i.+p--even my love. There, I have said it!" she repeated, with a little sob, "my love."

His arms were suddenly around her. She shrank back in her chair. Her terrified eyes invited and yet reproached him.

"Remember--oh, please remember!" she cried.

"What can I remember except one thing?" he whispered.

She held him away from her.

"You talk as though everything were possible between us. How can that be?

I have no joy in my husband, nor he in me--but I am married. We are not in America."

He rose to his feet, a strong man trembling in every limb. He stood before her, trying to talk reasonably, trying to plead his cause behind the shelter of reasonable words.

"Let me tell you," he began, "why our divorce laws are so different from yours. We believe that the worst breach of the Seventh Commandment is the sin of an unloving kiss, the unwillingly given arms of a shuddering wife, striving to keep the canons of the prayer book and besmirching thereby her life with evil. We believe, on the other hand, that there is no sin in love."

"If you and I were alone in the world!"

"If you are thinking of your friends," he pleaded, "they are more likely to be proud of the woman who had the courage to break away from a debasing union. Every one realises--what your husband is. He has been unfaithful not only to you but to every friend he has ever had."

"Do I not know it!" she moaned. "Isn't the pain of it there in my heart, hour by hour!"

His reasonableness was deserting him. Again he was the lover, begging for his rights.

"Wipe him out of your mind, sweetheart," he begged. "I'll buy you from him, if you like, or fight him for you, or steal you--I don't care which.

Anything sooner than let you go."

"I don't want to go," she confessed, afraid of her own words, s.h.i.+vering with the meaning of them.

"You never shall," he continued, his voice gaining strength with his rising hopes. "You've opened my lips and you must hear what is in my heart. You are the one love of my life. My hours and days are empty, I want you always by my side."

The love of him swept her away. Her head had fallen back, she saw his face through the mist.

"Go on, go on," she begged.

"I want you as I have wanted nothing else in life--not only for my own sake, for yours. I want to chase all those lines of sorrow away from your face."

"My poor, tired face," she faltered.

"Tired?" he repeated. "It's the most beautiful face on earth."

The smile which suddenly transformed her quivering mouth made it indeed seem so.

"You are so foolish, dear, but go on," she pleaded.

"I want to see you grow younger and lighter-hearted. I want you to realise day by day that something beautiful is stealing into your life. I want you to feel what real love is--tender, pa.s.sionate, lover's love."

"My dear, my dear!" she cried. "I do not dare to think of these things, yet they sound so wonderful."

"Leave the daring to me, sweetheart," he answered. "You shall have nothing to do but rest after these horrible days, rest and care for me a little."

"Oh, I do care!" she exclaimed, with sudden pa.s.sion. "That is what makes it all so wonderful."

"You love me? Tell me so once more?" he begged.

"Dear, I love you. You must have known it or you couldn't have said these things. And I thought I was going to die without knowing what love was."

"Never fear that again," he cried joyfully. "You shall know what it is every hour of the day. You shall know what it is to feel yourself surrounded by it, to feel it encompa.s.s you on every side. You shall know what it is to have some one think for you, live for you, make sweet places for your footsteps in life."

Her eyes shone. The years had fallen away. She rose tremblingly to her feet, her arms stole around his neck.

"John, you dear, wonderful lover," she whispered, "why, it has come already! I am forgetting everything. I am happy!"

The clock on Wingate's mantelpiece struck one. He drew himself gently away from the marvel of those soft entwining arms, stooped and kissed Josephine's fingers reverently.

"Dear," he said, "let me begin to take up my new responsibilities. We must arrange for your stay here."

She laughed happily, rose, and with a woman's instinct stood before the mirror, patting her hair.

"I don't recognise myself," she murmured. "Is this what love brings, John?"