I heard them talking about it at the reception. You couldn’t have got away with it even if I hadn’t interfered. You would have been in the penitentiary before three months were passed.”
The man was white to the lips now and sank back in his chair groaning. It was a piteous sight! Tears filled Arla’s eyes in spite of her resolution.
Then he suddenly raised his head and glared at her again with his bloodshot eyes.
“And I suppose you don’t think they’ll trace your package and come after me to every country in Europe?” he snarled, terror in his face.
“No,” said Arla coolly, “I wrote a note inside the box and told her she must have dropped the necklace into the suitcase when she was packing.”
He was still, staring at her, the strained muscles of his face gradually relaxing. Then he dropped his head into his hands again and groaned aloud, groan after groan until Arla felt she could not stand another one.
At last he spoke again.
“Everything is lost!” he moaned. “I might as well be in the penitentiary. I can’t meet my obligations! I can’t ever get on my feet again! I am disgraced before the world!”
“Listen, Carter!” said Arla in a tone that demanded attention. “You are only disgraced if you have done something wrong. I saved you from doing one wrong thing. I’m glad I could. I never could respect you again if you had done that! But it’s undone now. The necklace is on its way back, and no harm will come to you but losing your business. I’m glad you’re losing that. I hate it! It is what made you forget your love for me and go after another woman. Oh, she may be a great deal more attractive than I am, and all that, but you belonged to me. By all that had gone before, you were mine and I was yours. You knew that! By your own confession these past few days, you know it now. Now stop acting like a baby and be a man! How do you think I feel having a husband like you?”
“What can I do?” he groaned.
“Sit up and stop acting like a madman,” said his wife, turning away to hide the sorrow and contempt in her eyes. “If you’ll get calm and listen, I’ll tell you what you can do, and I’ll stand by and help you! What you should do is take the next boat back and hand over your business to your creditors. Then let’s go home and start anew. You can do it, and I can help you. Won’t you listen to reason, Carter, and let us be honest, respectable people as our parents were?”
Carter, slumped in his chair, made no reply for a long, long time. Arla sat tense, every nerve strained, waiting. She knew that her words had been like blows to him. She felt weak and helpless now that she had spoken. It was like waiting to see whether someone beloved was going to die or live.
But at last he lifted his head and looked at her. She was shocked at his face. It had grown old and haggard in that short time. He had the terrible baffled look of one who had walked the heights and been flung to the depths. She had never seen him before with his self-confidence stripped from him utterly.
“I could never get back to that!” he said, and his voice was hoarse and hopeless.
“Yes, you could!” said Arla eagerly. “If you’d just be willing to give it all up and start over again!”
“Oh, you don’t know!” he said, still with that hopeless look in his eyes. “You don’t know it all!”
“You’d be surprised!” said Arla, springing up and going over to kneel beside him with her arm about him. “I know a lot more than you think I know. You left your books out one day, and I thought they were the books you told me to look up that old metropolitan account in. I hadn’t an idea what I was coming on until it was too late.”
He looked at her, startled, blanching. “And you knew all that, and yet you married me?” “Yes,” said Arla, her voice trembling. He suddenly dropped his head upon her shoulder. “I’m not worthy of you,” he groaned. “I guess I never was!”
“That has nothing to do with it, Carter!” she said almost fiercely. “I love you, and you shall be worthy! Say you will, Carter, oh, say you will!”
Her