It was Bennet's letters that finally got me into trouble with Roger. I had been engaged to him only a little more than two weeks, and I must have dropped one of his letters in Roger's sitting-room, for on arriving home from work one afternoon I found that he had come in my absence, and, as Margaret warned me before I went up-stairs, seemed to be in a "towering rage" about something.

He was walking up and down, and he swung around and glared at me savagely as I stood in the doorway. He had a paper in his hand (Bennet's letter), and his face was so convulsed and ugly and accusing that involuntarily I shrank back as he came toward me. I have never seen a man in such an ungovernable rage. He did not give me a chance to say anything. There was nothing of which he did not accuse me. I was a thing whose meaning I did not even know. He, so he said, had been a deluded fool, and had let himself be led along by a girl he had supposed too good to take advantage of him. Yet all the while, while I was taking gifts—yes, the clothes on my back—and other favors, even my position, which I kept only because of Mr. Forman's obligations to him, I had, it seems, given myself to another man!

The accusations were so gross and monstrous and black that I could not answer him. I knew what was in Bennet's letter—terms of endearment, expressions of undying love, and (this is where I came under the judgment of Roger) the desire to see me soon again and hold me in his arms.

Yes, Bob had held me in his arms,—he believed I was to be his wife,—but I was not the thing Roger accused me of being. My relations with Bennet were as pure as a girl's can be. It would have been impossible for a girl to have any other kind of relations with a man like Bennet. I stood bewildered under the storm of his accusations and cruel reproaches, and the revelation of the things he had done for me without my knowledge or consent. At first, as he denounced me, I had flinched before him, because I was aware of having really deceived him, in a way; but as he continued to heap abuse upon me, some rebellious spirit arose in me to defy him. I had not had an Irish grandmother for nothing.

I waited till he was through, and then I said:

"You think you are a man, but I declare you are a brute and a coward. Yes, it is true, I am engaged to Mr. Bennet, and I defy you to say to him what you have said to me."

Then I fled from his room to my own. I locked myself in there. He came knocking at my door, and rattling at the handle, but I would not open it, and then he called out:

"Nora, I am going away now—forever—never to come back, you understand. You will never see my face again unless you come out and speak to me now."

But I would not open my door. I heard him going down-stairs and the slam of the front door. Now I realized what had happened. He had actually gone! Never before had he left me like this. I opened my door, went down-stairs, and then I saw him waiting for me in the living-room. I tried to run back, but he was too quick for me. He sprang after me, caught me in his arms, and half carried me up to his room. There he locked the door, and put the key into his pocket. I wouldn't look at him, I wouldn't speak to him. He came over, and tried to put his arms about me, but I shoved him away, and he said in a voice I had never heard from him before:

"So I've lost you, have I, Nora?" And then, as I would not answer him: "So Bennet cut me out. That's it, is it?"

I said:

"No; no one cut you out but yourself. You've shown yourself to me just as you are, and you're ugly. I hate you!" and I burst into tears.

He knelt down beside me. I was sitting on the edge of the big Morris chair, and all the while he talked to me I had my face covered with my hands.

"Listen to me, Nora. I know I've said things to you for which I ought to be horsewhipped; but I was nearly insane. I am still. I don't know what to think of you, what to do to you. The thought that you, whom I have cherished as something precious and different from every one else in my life, have been deceiving me all these months drives me distracted. I could kill you without the slightest compunction."

I looked at him at that, and I said:

"Roger, you don't think I've done anything wrong, do you?"

"I don't know what to think," he said. "It is a revelation to me that you were capable of deceiving me at all."

"But I am only engaged to Bob; that's all."

"Only engaged! In heaven's name! what do you mean? Do you intend to marry this man?"

"No, I never did; but—"

I was beginning to soften a bit to him. I could see his point of view. He was holding me by the arms so I couldn't get away from him, and when you are very close like that to a man you love (almost in his arms) you cannot help being moved. I was, anyway, and I said:

"I'll try and explain everything to you, if you won't be too angry with me."

"Go on."

"Well, you know when I got that fifty dollars, and gave up my position? Well, I spent it all and got down to ten cents, and I couldn't get work, and I was nearly starving—honestly I was. That last day I didn't have any dinner and hardly any luncheon or breakfast. Well then, I met Bob, and I told him—that very first night—and he lent me ten dollars, and insisted that I should take something from him each week till I got a position."

"In God's name, why did you not ask me?"

"I couldn't, Roger; I couldn't."

"Why not? Why not?"

"Because—because—I loved you. I could take help from a man I didn't love, but not from one I did."

I began to sob, and he sat down in the Morris chair, and lifted me up on his knee, but he held me off, so I could continue with my story.

"Go on now."

So then I told him everything: how, later, when I at last returned the money to Bennet, he had proposed to me, and how I couldn't help accepting him. "And, anyway," I finished, "engagements are nothing. I'm engaged to two other men as well."

I thought this was my chance to make a reckless clean breast of everything.

He tumbled me out of his lap at that, stared at me, gasped, threw back his head, and burst into a sort of wild laughter, almost of relief. Then suddenly he pulled me up into his arms, and held me hard against his breast for the longest time, just as if he were never going to let me go again, and then I knew just as well as anything that he did love me, even though he wouldn't admit it. So, with that knowledge, I was ready to forgive him for anything or everything.

You see, things were all turned about now, and I was in the position of the accuser and not of the accused, and that despite the attitude he pretended to assume. He wanted to know if all three of my friends had kissed me, and I had to admit that they had, and tell him just how many times. Dick had kissed me just that one time, Bob four times, and the Western editor just once. It was a bitter pill for Roger to swallow, and he said:

"And I have been afraid to touch you."

"That's not my fault," I said. "You can kiss me any time you wish."

He didn't accept my hint or invitation. He was walking up and down now, pulling at his lip, and at last he said:

"Nora, get your things all packed. I'll have to take you with me."

"Where?"

"I'm obliged to go abroad on a certain pressing matter. I came here to-day specially to be with you before leaving. I see I can't leave you behind."

"Do you mean—" I said, and for one delirious moment I imagined something that was impossible.

"I mean simply that, though it will be devilishly inconvenient, I shall be obliged to take you with me. I can't trust you here."

That thought still persisted in my foolish head, and I said:

"Roger, do you mean that we are going to be married?"

He stared at me a moment, and then said shortly:

"No. That's impossible."

I swallowed a lump that came up hard in my throat, and I could not speak. Then after a moment I said:

"You want to take me, then, because you are afraid some other man might get me, not because you want me yourself."

He said, with a slight smile:

"The first part of your statement is certainly true; the second part is questionable."

"I'm not going," I told him.

"Oh, yes, you are."

"Oh, no, I'm not."

"Are we to have another combat?"

"I'm not going."

"Can't leave your fiancÉ?" he asked.

"I'm just not going, that's all."

"What do you intend to do, then, while I'm gone?"

"Just what I'm doing now."

"You intend to continue your—er—engagement?"

"No; I'll break that off." I looked at Roger. "I owe that to him."

"H-m! Owe nothing to me, eh?"

My eyes filled up. I did owe much to him. He came over, picked my face up by the chin, and then drew me back to the seat by the fireplace, seating himself in the Morris chair, with me on the stool. He talked very gently to me now, and as if he were speaking to a child; but I could think only of one thing—that he was going away and I could not go with him. Why, he had not even told me he loved me, and though a few moments before I had believed he did, now the torturing doubts came up again. If he loved me, would he not want to marry me? Other men, like Bob and Dick, did.

"Roger, tell me this," I said. "Suppose I went to school and then to college, would I be like—other girls—I mean society girls—girls in your class?"

"You're better than they are now. You are in a class all by yourself, Nora."

"Don't answer me like that. You know what I want to know. Would I be socially their equal, for instance?"

"Why, naturally. That's a foolish question, Nora."

"No, it isn't. I just want to know. Now, supposing I got all that—that—culture—and everything, and I had nice manners, and dressed so I looked pretty and everything—and you wouldn't be a bit ashamed of me, and we could say my people were all sorts of grand folks,—they really are in England—my father's people,—well, suppose all this, and then suppose that you really loved me, just as I do you, then wouldn't I be good enough to be your wife?"

"Nora, why do you persist about that? I tell you once and for all that that is absolutely out of the question. I'm not going to marry you. In fact, I can't."

"Why?"

"I won't go into details. Let it suffice that there are reasons, and put the idea out of your head."

So, after that, there was nothing more for me to say; but he realized I would not go with him. When he at last resigned himself to this, he made me promise that while he was gone I would not only break my engagements with Bennet and the Western editor and Dick, but that I would in no circumstances let any man kiss or touch me, or make love to me in any way. He said if I'd promise him that, he'd be able to make his trip to Europe without undue anxiety, and that he would come back just as soon as he could.

"All right, then," I said; "I cross my neck."

I wrote three letters that night, all of which he read. If he had had his way, I would have rewritten them and worded them differently. He thought I ought to say: "Dear Mr. Bennet," "Dear Mr. Lawrence," etc., instead of "Dear Bob," "Dear Dick." My letters were virtually the same in each case. I asked to be released from my engagement; but I begged Bob to forgive me, and I said I should never forget him as long as I lived. Roger argued with me a whole half-hour to take that out. But I didn't, and I even cried at the thought of how I was hurting this boy who loved me. I was so miserable, in fact, that Roger said we'd go out and hear some music, and that would cheer me up.

Conscience is a peculiar thing. We can shut it up tightly, and delude ourselves with diversions that infatuate and blind us. I did not think of Bob while Roger was with me. I put on my prettiest dress, one of the dresses I now knew that he had paid for! It was a shimmering, Oriental-looking thing that had the stamp of Paquin upon it, and I had a wonderful emerald necklace, and a wreath of green leaves, with little diamonds sprinkled like dew over it, in my hair. Roger said that there was no one in the world like me. I suppose there was not. I certainly hope there was not. I was a fine sort of person!

I think it was the Thomas Orchestra we heard. I forget. I should have enjoyed it, I suppose, in ordinary circumstances, but I could not think of anything that night except that Roger was going away and that I might never see him again. And I thought of all the accidents that occurred at sea, and even though he was holding my hand under the program, I felt that I was the most unhappy girl in the world.

We couldn't stop to have even a little supper after the theater, for he was taking a train to New York, whence he was to sail.

His man Holmes (it was the first time I had ever seen him) was at the house when we got back, and had his bag and everything ready, waiting for him. I thought as he was going away on such a long trip he would at least kiss me good-by, and I could not keep from crying when, after we got in, he said right before Holmes, who wouldn't leave the room:

"I'll have to rush now. Be a good girl."

Then he said I was to go down to Mr. Townsend's (his lawyer's) office, and he would tell me about some arrangements he himself had made for me, and I was to write to him every day, though he said nothing about writing to me. He wrote down an address in London where I was to send my letters. The only thing he did that approached a caress was that, when his man went ahead of him down the stairs, he stopped in the upper hall, lifted my face, and gave me a long, searching look. Then he said:

"I'm not likely to think about anything but you, darling." Then he went quickly down the stairs, leaving me sobbing up there.