The Brute

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“So do I – Edith – so do I.” His tone betrayed the intensity of his feelings. “I wish I could do more for you – but I haven’t the right – I haven’t the right.” His voice trailed off helplessly. “I only wish I had.”

She said nothing to this. It was perilous ground and they both knew it. “How is Donald?” he asked suddenly.

“Oh, he’s very well. Busy as ever. Won’t you come in and see us this evening?”

“No – not this evening. I have a man with me from Denver that I must be with. He is going on to Boston at midnight. One of our directors,” he added by way of explanation. “But we must take a ride in the machine to-morrow. I suppose it will be quite rusty for want of use.”

“I suppose so. I’ve missed our trips.”

He looked at her closely. “Yes, I can see that,” he said, “you do not look so well – you are pale and tired. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Oh, nothing much. Sewing, mostly.” She did not tell him that her principal occupation had been waiting for him to return.

“You need the fresh air. Suppose we take a run down to Garden City and have luncheon there. I’ll look in and see Donald in the morning and say hello. Does he know I am back?”

“No – I don’t think so. I didn’t mention it.”

He said nothing to this at first and did not even look at her. “I wonder if Donald minds my – our – our going about so much together,” he ventured, at last. “Do you think he does?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “Why should he? I think he is rather glad that I have had so much pleasure.” She hesitated a moment, then went on. “He has never said anything. You know how fond he is of you.”

“Yes – I know it.” He spoke as though the thought brought up unpleasant ideas. “Isn’t life a terrible tragedy?” he said, as though to himself. “The things we want most, it seems, we can never, never have, without hurting someone else to get them.”

“Donald says that is sure proof that we ought not to have them,” she said in a low voice.

“And do you think so, too?” he asked eagerly.

“I – I do not know.”

He hesitated a moment, then went on impetuously. “Is duty after all everything in the world? Is there not a duty to ourselves as well as to others? May not one duty conflict with another, and make it hard to know which one we ought to follow? Must two people make themselves utterly wretched, to give happiness to a third? Isn’t it somehow sort of unequal – paying too great a price for a thing that is not worth it?”

She did not answer him, nor did he expect her to do so. He was in reality only thinking aloud – expressing the thoughts which had been uppermost in his mind for the past three weeks, and, woman-like, she took refuge in silence, for she knew that were she to answer him truthfully she would agree with him.

“If two people love each other enough, doesn’t it make up for anything else in the world? We can’t control our feelings. We can’t help it, if love comes to us and takes from us everything in our lives, and leaves nothing behind but itself. There must be some purpose in it all. If there is nothing left to us but love, why should we have to give that up as well, and go on and on in wretched misery to the end? I can’t do it – and yet, I know that I must.”

She trembled as she heard his words – so unlike the care-free man she had come to know. He had changed very much, in these past few weeks. The lines of suffering in his face were new to it, and only a great emotion could have set them there. He loved her with a strong, compelling love, and he was wrestling with the vital problems of duty and right. She, on her part, loved him because of what pleasure he had given her, and was wrestling with no problems whatever. Her only thought at the moment was a great desire to have him put his arms about her and crush her to him. This, however, he did not know, for he had idealized her and invested her with all manner of high qualities and virtues which she by no means possessed. She had begun to feel just a trifle annoyed by his constant self-control. Somehow it seemed to belittle her own powers of attraction. She feared, at times, that he might, casting prudence, duty – honor to the winds, overwhelm her in a wild and rapturous outburst of love, but the fact that he had not done so, up to now, annoyed her a little, and almost made her desire the more that he would. She liked to feel that West was a firebrand, that she herself was keeping him at a distance – she did not enjoy the thought that he was controlling himself in spite of her. He pedestaled her as a paragon of virtue, a creature of restraint, which he, a devastating male, had caused to love him. She was in reality far more frail than he, and the more he held aloof, the more she burned for his caresses. Passion had made her shameless.