Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Senator North

43 of 89

I'd rather make myself over than do without you. And I couldn't! I couldn't! Every least thing that happens, I want to go straight to you about it. I know that trouble is ahead, although I haven't admitted it before. I want you in every way! in every way! And I can't even have you in that. I never will speak like this again, but I'd like you to know. If you love me, you must know how terrible it is. I am not a child. I am twenty-seven years old." "I know," he replied; and for a few moments he said no more, but looked down into the water. "I am not a believer in people parting because they can't have everything," he continued finally. "It is only the very young who do that. They take the thing tragically; passion and disappointment trample down common-sense. If love is the very best thing in life, it is not the only thing. Every time I have seen you I have wanted to take you in my arms, and yet I have enjoyed every moment spent in your presence. The thought of giving you up is intolerable. We both are old enough to control ourselves. And I believe that any habit can be acquired." "And will you never take me in your arms? Have I got to go through life without that? I must say everything to-day--I will row out into the middle of the lake if you like, but I must know that." "You can stay here. There are certain things that no man can say, Betty, even to the most loved and trusted of women. The only answer that I can make to your question is, that if I find I must leave you, I certainly shall take you in my arms once." "Are you sorry I told you I loved you? Would it be easier if I had not?" "Probably. But I am not sorry! Love can give happiness even when one is denied the expression of it." "I never intended to tell you. I was afraid if I did you would leave me at once." "So I should if you were not--you. But I should think myself a fool if I did not make an attempt to achieve the second best. I may fail, but I shall try. And life is made up of compromises." "You are more certain of smashing the Trusts," she said with the humour which never bore repression for long. "In dealing with methodical scoundrels you know at least where you are. A man and woman never can be too certain of what five minutes will bring forth. That ends it. We never will discuss the question again until it comes up for the last time--if it does. I do not mean that I shall not tell you again that I love you, for I shall. I have no desire that you shall forget it. I mean that we will not discuss possibilities again, nor give expression to the passionate regret we both must feel. Is it a compact?" "I will keep my part in it. I promise to be good. I have prided myself on my intelligence. I am not going to disgrace it by ruining the only happiness I ever shall have. I love you, and I will prove it by making your part as easy as I can, and by giving you all the happiness I am permitted to give you." He leaned toward her for the first time, but he did not touch her. "And I promise you this, my darling," he said softly: "if you ever should be in great trouble and should send for me--as of course you would do--I will take you in my arms then and forget myself. Now, change seats with me and I will row you part of the way home; I shall get out a half-mile from the hotel. There really was no reason why you should have made me walk nearly the entire length of the lake." "I had fancied you in this particular part of the forest, and I wanted to find you here." "That is so like a woman," he said humorously. "But all of us make an occasional attempt to realize a dream, I suppose." VIII He came over to dinner that night, and Betty, who had walked about in a vague dreamy state all day, dressed herself again in white. She woke up suddenly as she came into his presence, and was the life of the dinner. Harriet seemed absent of mind and nervous, but Emory's spirits were normal, and he was more attentive to Sally Carter than she to him. But Betty's interest in her friends' affairs had dropped to a very low ebb. She was in a new mental world, stranger than that entered by most women, for her hands were empty, but she was happy. She had reflected again--in so far as she had been capable of reflection--that most marriages were prosaic, and that her own high romance, her inestimable happiness in loving and being loved by a man in whom her pride was so great, was a lot to be envied of all women. It was not all the destiny she herself would have chosen, but it compassed a great deal. She would have made him wholly happy, been his whole happiness; marriage between them never would have been prosaic, and she would not have cared if it were; she would have made him forget the deep trials and sorrows of his past and the worries and annoyances of the present. But this was not to be, and there was much she could do for him and would. They talked politics through dinner, and Mrs. Madison noted with a sigh that Betty's interest in the undesirable institution was unabated. She admired Senator North, however, and felt pride in his appreciation of her brilliant daughter. She expressed her regret amiably at not being able to meet again Mrs. North, who would see none but old friends in these days, and Senator North assured her of his wife's agreeable remembrance of her brief acquaintance with Mrs. Madison. "How wonderfully well people behave whose common secret would set their world by the ears," thought Betty. "Our worst enemies could detect nothing; and on what there is heaven knows a huge scandal could be built." After dinner she played to him for an hour, while the others, with the exception of Mrs. Madison, who went to sleep, became absorbed in whist. But she did not see him for a moment alone, and Jack rowed him across the lake. She went to her bed, but not to sleep. She hardly cared if she never slept again. Night in a measure gave him to her, and to sleep was to forget the wonder that he loved her. It was shortly after midnight that she heard a faint but unmistakable creaking on the tin roof of the veranda. She sat up. Some one was about to pass her window. She sprang out of bed, crossed the room softly, and lifted the edge of the curtain. A figure was almost crawling past. It was a woman's figure; the stars gave enough light to

43 of 89 pages. Go to page:

Go to this Book's Directory Page