Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/99

 unhappy. We're both unhappy. I want to end it. I want to get—whatever there's left for me to get—before I'm old and—and pitiful. I don't want to be alone then—now—ever any more." And she began to weep again.

"My God!" he said. "If you'd done this ten years ago!"

"I know," she sobbed. "But I didn't!"

He began to walk up and down the room. "I wouldn't care for myself," he explained, "but I can't take advantage of a mood like this, to rush you into a position— You'd hate me. You don't appreciate what you're doing. With the people waiting for you, and the seats sold—running away like this, with a married man—and all the publicity and the scandal."

She sat up, staring at him. He was a big, dark man,black-mustached; and he stood uncomfortably, with his hands deep in his pockets, his head down, blinking at the floor, and talking in a rumbling, grumbling voice. "He looked," she said afterward, "like a fat boy who was being tempted to play hooky from school." And suddenly, in the midst of his perfectly reasonable remonstrances, she began to laugh.

He started as if she had struck him. He turned on her, red, ridiculous. "Have you been playing some damn game with me?" he demanded.

"No—no," she shouted, at the top of hysterical peals of laughter. "No! I was se-se-serious!"