God! How I struggled to remain Stephen Cortlandt, but
it would have taken a BIG man to mould you to his ways, and I was
only average. I began to do your work in your particular style; I
forgot my ambitions and my dreams and took up yours. That's what I
fell to, and all the time I KNEW it, and--and all the time I knew
you neither cared nor understood. My only consolation was the
thought that even though you never had loved me and never could,
you at least respected our relation. I clung to that miserably,
for it was all I had left, all that made me seem like a man. And
yet you took away even that. I tried to rebel, but I had been
drugged too long. You saw Anthony, and he had the things I lack;
you found you were not a machine, but a living woman. He
discovered the secret I had wasted away in searching for, and you
rewarded him. Oh, I saw the change in you quickly enough, and if
I'd been a man instead of what I was, I'd have--but I wasn't. I
went spying around like a woman, hating myself for permitting it
to go on, but lacking strength to stop it. But to-night, when he
got up before those other men and dangled my shame before my eyes,
I had enough manhood left in me to strike back. Thank God for that
at least! Maybe it's not too late yet; maybe if I get away from
you and try--" His voice died out weakly; in his face there was a
miserable half-gleam of hope.
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