gifts. They have all they can do to keep from starving. Johnny’s mother is likely dying tonight. He won’t be able to get any flowers for her funeral! Smelton’s wife has had a relapse, and one of his children has a broken leg; the only child who had any job at all. Miss Gaye needs all her salary for gum. Who would you think would send you fruit from the office if I didn’t?”
“But why you?” he asked again, a strange incredulous look in his eyes.
“Why I?” answered the girl with a flash of her tear-drowned eyes and a sudden quiver of her lovely lip. “Why I? Because I was a fool! Because I’ll always be a fool, I suppose, where you are concerned! Because I thought I loved you, and wanted you to have all the honor there was, even from an office like ours! It was just after you told me that I had always been—Oh, what’s the use! I won’t say those empty words over. I had a spirit of self-sacrifice. I thought I loved you enough to sacrifice myself! That was before I found out I couldn’t stand it! It was before I told your other bride that I’d go through hell to marry you. It was even before I understood what hell was like!”
“Did you tell her that?” His face was white with anger and a strange wild remorse.
“Yes, I told her that when she said she wouldn’t marry you after what she’d seen, and asked me if I would, and I said I’d go through hell to marry you! But I didn’t know what hell could be like then, even at the beginning. I thought I was in it then, but I wasn’t.”
A wave of shamed color swept over his face, leaving it white as death. He almost staggered and put out his hand to steady himself against the wall.
“You don’t care that you’re putting me through hell, do you?” he whined impressively.
She gave him a withering glance.
“You deserve it,” she said fiercely. “I don’t! I’ve always tried to be as decent as you would let me. I never played fast and loose with you. I’ve loved you always—and—I love you—now! God help me! Why do I love you? Oh, why? You are despicable! You know you are! How could anybody love a little handsome selfish beast like you? And yet I do! Oh, what a wedding night!”
She threw herself suddenly down upon the bed and wept bitterly. And he, trembling, almost ashamed, filled with passionate remorse and angry retaliation, turned the light off and crept humbly to her side, kneeling, groping for her hand. Her words had lashed him through fury into a sudden brief fleeting vision of himself.
“Arla!” he said, reaching after her in the dark. “Arla! Don’t cry that way! I do love you!”
Chapter 9
Sherrill awoke in the morning with a gorgeous sunlight streaming across the lovely old blue rug, lighting her familiar room cheerfully.
Then instantly, as if someone had struck her across the heart with a club, there came to her a remembrance of all that had happened since she awoke in that room so joyously yesterday morning. The future, drab and desolate, stretched itself away before her, a dreary prospect.
Sherrill’s soul turned sick at her own desolation, and all the horror of her situation rushed over her with a realization of details which she had not had time for last night in the sudden stress and need for immediate action.
And now of course the first thought that occurred was, had she done right? Was her action too hasty? Had there been any other way? What would other girls have done? Could she have married him knowing the truth about him?
Of course, if there had been the least doubt about it, if there had been any chance at all that she was misjudging him, she would have been wrong not to have given him an opportunity to explain, to clear himself if he could.
But she had heard his own words. She had seen him clasp that other girl and kiss her with the same passionate fervency with which he had kissed her. She had seen his face as he took her in his arms. She could never forget it. Yes, she had heard his own confession that he still loved the other girl, and that after his marriage and wedding trip they would be freer than ever—! Ah! She caught her lips between her teeth with a trembling breath. How