It is easy to be
the martyr of an hour or a day. But to drag into a sordid and squalid
martyrdom the woman one loves--well, the man does not live who would do it,
if he knew what I know, had seen what I have seen. No, love is a luxury of
the rich and the poor and the steady-going. It is not for my kind, not for
me."
They were pausing at Mrs. Carnarvon's door.
"I shall not come in this afternoon," he said. "But to-morrow--if I don't
come in to-day, don't you think it will be all right for me to come then?"
"I shall expect you," she said.
The talk of those who had come in for tea seemed artificial and flat. She
soon went up-stairs, eager to be alone. Mechanically she went to her desk
to write her customary daily letter to Danvers. She looked vacantly at the
pen and paper, and then she remembered why she was sitting there.
"You are a traitor," she said to her reflection in the mirror over the
desk. "But you will pay for your treason. Has not one a right to that for
which she is willing to pay?"
XII.
MAKING THE MOST OF A MONTH.
To be sure of a woman a man must be confident either of his own powers or
of her absolute frankness and honesty. It was self-assurance that made
Edward Danvers blindly confident of Marian.
His father, a man with none but selfish uses for his fellow men, had given
him a pains-taking training as a vigilant guard for a great fortune.
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