"A year?" I think he smiled at the surprise and disappointment in my voice.

"During which year," he said, "you will not meet each other except by accident, and you will not correspond."

I said nothing, but he read my thoughts.

"It isn't fair to you and Lucy? At least it is fair to me. n.o.body has thought about me. I have had to think for myself, and for the children. Admit this--if your love stands a year's test you will stand a far greater chance of happiness than if you ran away together now, unblessed by the man you had wronged, and unclergied. Admit this, too--that if your love doesn't stand the test, then my life has been ruined for as futile, puerile, misbegotten a pa.s.sion as ever reared its head under an honest man's roof. Admit it! Admit it."

"I'm not sure that I admit any such thing."

"Then, my dear fellow," he said, "your mental and moral capacity are on precisely the same plane. . . . I'm sure you don't want to injure Lucy. Give her this chance to straighten out and get untangled. If there is any truth in your love for her you will see that this way is best for her."

"I am thinking of her happiness."

"_Are_ you?"

"She's been very patient, John. I can't tell you how patient."

"For G.o.d's sake don't try to tell me. Haven't I had enough to bear?"

"I think Lucy won't be willing to wait a year."

"She must be made willing. You must help. A year soon pa.s.ses--soon pa.s.ses. If things then are as they are now, then I shall believe that your love for each other is strong and fine, and I shall renounce my claim with a good grace--a good grace."

"If we can't wait a year, John!"

"You mean if you won't? In that case I shall not feel that Lucy is ent.i.tled to a divorce, or either of you to any money at my hands.

Among the people who are necessary to you and Lucy, a wronged and upright husband has great power. If you are such children, such fools, as not to be willing to stand a test of your love, you will have to be punished. It would mean that your pa.s.sion has nothing to do with what is understood by love. You would merely be pointed at and pa.s.sed up as a rather well-known young couple with adulterous proclivities."

There was a long, charged silence.

"The law and the prophets are all on your side, John, but----"

"You'll not answer now, please. You'll think it over. And don't forget all the pleasant things that you can do in a year. There's that hunting trip in Somaliland you used to talk about so much--there's London and Paris--wonderful places for a man who's trying to cure himself of an unlawful love."

"Trying to _cure_ himself?"

"Of course. Jesting aside, don't you think that what you and Lucy want to do to Jock and Hurry and me is _wrong_? Of course you do. You're not a devil. If, by uttering the wish, you could bring it about that you had never loved Lucy, that she had never fallen out of love with me and loved you over the heads of her children, that all might be as it was when you first began to come to our house, wouldn't you utter that wish? Of course you would."

He was smiling at me now, very gently and cunningly, and there was, at the same time, in his eyes an awful pathos.

"Why, yes," I said, "I suppose so."

"Just bear out what I've always maintained," said he; "I've always maintained that you were a good fellow--at heart."

"Am I to see Lucy again--before the year begins?"

"Is it very necessary?"

"I suppose not. But----"

"Well, I imagine Lucy will insist on seeing you. It will be a pity, but after all she's only a little child in some ways. It's all going to be very hard for you both, at first," he said gently. "So you shall see each other again--if she says so."

Suddenly he reached out his hand, and I took it.

"Oh," he said, "I needed your help."

x.x.x

It seemed to me, at the time, that I had showed myself very weak in the conference in the taxi-cab. It seemed to me that my acquiescence in Fulton's proposals reflected on the strength of my love for Lucy.

Perhaps it did. But in the clearer light of today it seems to me that to his questions I made the only answers possible; and that only a demented person could have found serious flaws in the logic of his position.

When we had parted, I walked for a long time in the most crowded streets, trying to reconcile myself to the long separation from Lucy, and to the weakness which I thought I had betrayed in agreeing to it.

Could I endure that separation? The world would be empty with no Lucy to go to, no Lucy even to hear from. I loved her too much to part with all but the thought of her. It did not seem possible that the mere pa.s.sage of time could dull the edge of my pa.s.sion. Yet cold memory blinked at this very possibility.

I had parted from other women, thinking that thoughts of them must fill the rest of my life to the exclusion of everything else; only to find that after a little lapse of time their images faded, and even the memory of what they had been to me had no power to think.

So might it be with Lucy. "You know it _might_," said cold memory.

"Don't be a fool--you think it _won't_, but you know it might."

"But," I argued, "this is different. No other woman ever loved me as she does. I may be a fool, but her eyes have spoken, and I know the truth when I hear it."

"She _does_ love you," said my other self, which I have called cold memory, "and she did love him, and before his time, others, if only briefly. Without the sight of you to feed on, her love will starve and die. It is almost always so."

"Almost."

"There are exceptions. Is it likely, considering your records, that you and she will be an exception? It is not likely."

It wasn't. John Fulton was probably right. He believed that time would cure us, and almost the whole of human experience agreed with him.

And wouldn't it be better if we were cured? Far better. I had to admit that. We ought, indeed, to hope that we should be cured; to help with all our strength in the effecting of that cure. And conversely, Lucy ought to try to return to her affection for John and to her duty.

Suddenly I felt cold and shivery as before undergoing an operation.

Poor little Lucy! Even now she must be listening to John's ultimatum, as I had listened, but with this difference; she could not see the justice and the logic of his position. She would only see that she was being cruelly hurt, and thwarted, and disappointed; that she was being curbed and punished by forces too strong for her to cope with. And I pictured her, all reserve gone at last, a tortured child--just sobbing.

It seemed to me that I must go to her or die. And indeed I went a little way toward their hotel. Then I thought, perhaps her sobs would move him to a change of heart. Perhaps he will weaken, and let her go.

Upon the strength of this thought I returned to my own hotel, rearing a blissful edifice of immediate happiness.

I sat in the lobby in a position of reading, a newspaper before my face; but I did not read. I was listening for the boy who would page me to the telephone. Many names were called in the lobby, but it was two o'clock before I started at the sound of my own.

Fulton was at the other end of the telephone, not Lucy. He sounded very much upset and depressed: "Lucy would like to see you right away, if you can come round."

"Of course."

We said no more.