“You must have loved Mr. Rothe when you married him,” said Catalina, with curiosity, and feeling that Mrs. Rothe had opened the gates and bade her enter.
“I did,” said the older woman, dryly. “For what other reason, pray, would I make a fool of myself, and disgust and antagonize those whom I had loved so long? What a fool the world is!” she burst out. “And writers, for that matter! They are always harping on the death of the man’s love, upon the punishment that will be visited upon the woman of mature years who marries a man younger than herself! I am capable of the profoundest feeling, and I have never been able really to love a man in my life. I have deluded myself again and again, and invariably the man has disappointed or disgusted me. This is my third husband. The first died, but not soon enough to leave me with a blessed memory. The second, whom I had found irresistible, developed into a gourmand with a bad temper. I lived with him for fifteen years. When I met Rothe I was forty, the beginning of the most critical period in the life of women of my sort—when if not happy we would stake our souls for happiness. It seemed to me that I could not continue to live without love, and yet that I could not die unless I had, if only for a day, loved to the full capacity of my nature. When I met Rothe and he fell head over heels in love with me—I was a very handsome woman five years ago—I was at first flattered; then his ardor struck fire in me and I made no effort to extinguish it. It was what I had waited for, prayed for, and I encouraged it, fanned the flame. I was convinced that it was the grand passion at last; and I went out to Dakota. I gloried in the sacrifice, gloated over it. And in spite of divorce and scandal I suppose I was happy for a time.”
“And now?” asked Catalina, breathlessly. She had forgotten Over and Miss Holmes. Never had she been so close to living tragedy. Mrs. Rothe, in her negligée of pale yellow silk and much lace, her ruffled petticoat and slippers of the same shade, indescribably fresh and dainty, and, in the light of the solitary candle, a beautiful woman once more, was to Catalina the very embodiment of “the world,” and for the moment far more interesting than herself.