"Marcia, dear--Marcia--what is it?" cried Sylvia, rushing to her and clasping the shaking figure in her arms. "Tell me what it is, dear."
"Oh, how could he!" moaned the woman. "How could he be so cruel!"
"Stanley--he has left a check--money--thrown it in my face! And I did it so gladly--because I loved him. He knew that. Yet he could leave this--pay me--as if I were a common servant. I had rather he struck me--a hundred times rather."
It was filled out in Stanley Heath's clear, strong hand and was for the sum of a hundred dollars.
"How detestable of him!" she exclaimed. "Tell me, Marcia--what happened between you and Mr. Heath? You quarreled--of course I know that. But why--why? I have not wanted to ask, but now--"
"I'll tell you everything, Sylvia. I'd rather you knew. I thought at first I could keep it to myself, but I cannot. I need you to help me, dear."
"If I only could!" murmured Sylvia, drawing her closer.
As if quieted by the warmth of her embrace, Marcia wiped her eyes and began to speak, tremulously.
She unfolded the story of her blind faith in Stanley Heath; her love for him--a love she could neither resist nor control--a love she had known from the first to be hopeless. She confessed how she had fought against his magnetic power; how she had struggled to conceal her feelings; how he himself had resisted a similar attraction in her; how at last he had discovered her secret and forced her to betray it.
Slowly, reluctantly she went on to tell of the final scene between them--his insistence on coming back to her.
"Of course I realized we could not go on," she explained bravely. "That we loved one another was calamity enough. All that remained was for him to go away and forget me--return to his wife, his home, and the interests and obligations of his former life. Soon, if he honestly tries, this infatuation will pass and everything will be as before. Men forget more easily than women. Absence, too, will help."
"I am free. There is no law forbidding me to remember. I can go on caring, so long as he does not know. It will do no harm if here, far away, where he will never suspect it, I continue to love him."
"I cannot give up my love. It is all I have now. Oh, I do not mean to mourn over it, pity myself, make life unhappy. Instead, I shall be glad, thankful. You will see. This experience will make every day of living richer. You need have no fears for me, Sylvia. You warned me, you know," concluded she with a pathetic little smile.