CHAPTER XV.

WHAT WAS INEVITABLE.

By the window of her room, opened to the river, Freda remained all the rest of the night. There was no soul near her. She watched the grey river until the moon sank, and until the sun rose slowly from behind the opposite shore. No one would ever understand it. It was not the kind of sorrow that could be confessed and forgotten. Something irrevocable had controlled her fate. Now, so long as the world stood, her heart would find no friend to learn its bitterness. Deep in its inscrutable recesses suffering would call to suffering and receive no answer. Alone, desperately alone, she must stumble bravely before the inevitable current that bears towards to-morrow.

But these night thoughts gradually surrendered their poignancy to the bald light of growing day.

In the middle of the forenoon Mauney came to the house.

She took him into the library, and pointed to a chair beside the large French window that let in a blinding shaft of sunshine.

“I hope I’ll be pardoned,” he said, “for coming down so early.”

She made no reply, but watched him as he leaned forward to gaze at the sunlight on the rug.

“I still can’t think that you were honest last night, Freda,” he continued. “I can’t think that you believe this confounded scandal.”

“No, Mauney,” she answered sadly. “I never believed it.”

“I can understand how you felt,” he admitted, “And I ought not to have been so precipitate. I ought to have denied it for you. I deny it now thoroughly and completely. Jean Byrne was an old school teacher of mine.”

“Oh, Mauney, you don’t need to explain. My faith in you never faltered a minute at any time. I was only afraid that I had hurt you.”

“You did, too,” he said, “But being hurt didn’t alter the fact that I loved you, and that I love you right now more than any thing on earth.”

He rose and walked to her chair.

“Freda,” he said tenderly, “I can’t go on living without you. You are necessary to me. Tell me that you care as little as I do about this scandal!”

“It’s nothing—just nothing,” she replied, rising and walking to the window.

He followed her, and as he saw her white gown rimmed with the strong sunshine, and her black hair caught in a fringe of golden light his heart bounded. Here before him was the living woman he loved. She was his treasure.

“I have waited long enough,” he said, taking her hand. “I have been a fool long enough, Freda. Our love is deeper than such a petty misunderstanding.”

“Yes,” she said very softly, without turning from the window, “It is deeper.”

With his hand on her shoulder he turned her face to him, but as he was about to draw her close he noticed a sadness in her eyes that puzzled him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked gently.

“Tell me what’s right!” she replied, as she bit the tip of her handkerchief. “I’m sure I’ll kill you when I confess—and yet, I must tell you, so you can know what I’m like.”

“What do you mean?”

“Last night I promised to marry Ted Courtney.”

Mauney stared incredulously.

“Courtney!” he stammered. “But—Freda—why?”

Her eyes, as they turned toward the window, were dry and possessed of a bitter calmness.

“I don’t understand,” Mauney said, and paused. “You promised to marry Courtney. Do you mean that?”

“Yes—unfortunately.”

“But surely—” he began. “You’re not going to—to do it.”

“Yes, Mauney,” she said, “I’m going to be his wife. Will you let me explain?”

He stared at her mystified.

“Remember me for one virtue, will you?” she asked, as she turned to fondle his coat lapels.

“Remember that I never deceived you. How can I tell you? Last night,” she continued in a lower tone, as her eyes shifted to the pine branches beyond the window, “I couldn’t have been quite myself. I tried to fight against my feelings, but I was crazy with regret, and weak.”

“But, Freda.”

“Sometime,” she interrupted. “You may be able to understand. I’m afraid you couldn’t now.”

“But think,” he said. “You can break your promise. You _must_!” He drew her impetuously to him.

“Don’t, please don’t,” she implored. “I can’t let you.”

His arms were trembling and on his face she read dismay. “But have you never loved me?” he demanded, “all these months?”

“I am an impatient person, Mauney,” she replied, freeing herself from his arms. “With me love must be romance or nothing. I must be taken when the fire burns in my heart. I can’t control it. All I know is that somehow you missed it. And now I cannot—come to you.”

Mauney, plunging his hands into his pockets, wheeled suddenly towards the window and stood for a long moment in puzzled meditation.

“Do you love Courtney?” he asked suddenly, glancing towards her.

“That question,” she replied, “seems somehow to be outside the rights of our present conversation.”

Her face, which had been pale, flushed a little. “If you are going to demand too many explanations, then I’ll ask you how it was possible for you to put Max Lee between us?”

“Why, Freda,” he began.

“And don’t you think,” she interrupted, “that, if you are quite frank with yourself, you’ll admit that you played with me a little longer than I could be expected to stand?”

He did not reply.

“Mauney,” she said, seating herself with all appearance of complacency in a deep chair. “Let’s not insist on rebelling against what is inevitable.”

“But why should it be inevitable?” he asked. “I think I am sufficiently intelligent to grasp any reasonable explanation.”

He walked quickly towards her. “Look here,” he said, folding his arms on his chest and fastening her gaze, “if you don’t love Courtney, why the devil will you marry him?”

For a moment her dark eyes seemed to expand with her effort to capture a fit reply. Then she said, slowly and softly, as if, in any event, her realistic nature could find some solace in things as they are: “I am going to marry him because he loves me, and because I was weak enough to give myself to him.”