Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/560

542 "Napoleon Garlic was a kindly soul, Duncan, but I wish he had never been born. But do not talk to me of him."

"I do not wish to talk of him. The names of the two men who have wrecked your happiness are not as delightful to me as you seem to think."

"Duncan!"

"Oh, I mean it!" And he walked to the window and looked out into the darkness. Suddenly he turned, and came quickly back to me. He took my hands in his own, and held them like a vise.

"You are not a widow!" he cried. "You never married that man!"

I fought to get my hands free, but in vain.

"I shall lose all patience with you. What has Juliet Mendoza to do with this? Tell me!—this moment! What has she to do with it?"

"I love her better than my life," I answered, "and she has forsaken, forsaken me! I am never to speak to her, to write to her."

He flung my hands from him, and he looked at me,—ah, not like a lover!—not like a lover did he look at me,—and he said, with contempt,—

"You need tell me nothing, Janet. I remember: it was Juliet Abercrombie who married Napoleon Garlic and was his widow! What a victim you have been!"

For answer to this I fell down at his feet, prone on the floor, and, he thought, dead.

How strong were the arms that lifted me, how faithful and tender the heart that gave me rest, and when at last I cried with passionate pain and rebellion because of my troubles, he tried—how like a lover!—to comfort me, and at last bade me remember that there were people in the house who would hear me.

"I do not care for the people!" I cried out. "I am miserable. Even the grave will not hold my misery. Forlorn and outcast and alone will my soul go into another life. And I deserve it! I deserve it!"

The hot tears rained down on my cheek, and I put my hand to wipe them from his eyes.

"Do not care so much for me, Duncan. I am not worth it."

And at that moment the door was gently opened, and the woman upon whose child Theresa had laid her geranium leaves came in. Without a word she took me out of Duncan's arms, and he staggered to a chair, weaker than I was.

"She is broken down by loneliness and poverty," he said. "But at last I have found her."

"She is your wife?" said the woman.

"She is going to be. To-morrow we are to be married, and she will be happy again."

But I did not marry Duncan the next day. Instead of that I lay in my room, ill, it seemed, to death,—so worn out and weak that I could not answer Duncan when he spoke to me. And I was content to have it so. Life and I had parted, and I felt it sweet to go away, in sweet