Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/335

 'No,' said Marthe after a moment, intently thinking. 'No. It is not so. He will always love you. You will always be his loved wife.'

'Marthe, I understand.' Jill still grimaced. 'No good going into that. He loves me. But it's you he wants.'

'Such wants pass.'

'Not Dick's for you. When he's with you he's in heaven. That's what it comes to. You'll never make him forget his want of heaven.'

'No! It is not heaven! With you it is heaven;—not with me! It is wrong with me!' cried Marthe Ludérac, looking fiercely about her, up at the cemetery wall, out at the forest, as though she sought some escape from the anguish of her thought. 'He is wrong—always wrong—when he is with me! Let him go! Let him forget me! Let it be like a bad dream to you both! It is a bad dream. It is a spell that has fallen upon him, and upon me.'

'No! No! No, Marthe,' said Jill in a trembling voice, but with a depth of conviction against which the other's passion spent itself in vain. 'It only seems like that;—because I am there between you;—and because you are human, and want each other, in every way. If I were not there, if you belonged to him—it would all be beautiful. And it shall be. Do you think I can keep Dick now, after what I've seen? Dick and I have loved each other; we love each other still; but it's nothing, nothing, to what he feels for you. Some people love when they're young and afterwards they