..I will always love him.How then could I marry any other man? I would be a lie, a cheat.If I could only forget him--only kill that love.Then Imight love another man--and if I did love him--no matter what I had felt or done before, I would be worthy.I could feel worthy.I could give him just as much.But without such love I'd give only a husk--a body without soul."Love, then, was the sacred and holy flame of life that sanctioned the begetting of children.Marriage might be a necessity of modern time, but it was not the vital issue.Carley's anguish revealed strange and hidden truths.In some inexplicable way Nature struck a terrible balance--revenged herself upon a people who had no children, or who brought into the world children not created by the divinity of love, unyearned for, and therefore somehow doomed to carry on the blunders and burdens of life.
Carley realized how right and true it might be for her to throw herself away upon an inferior man, even a fool or a knave, if she loved him with that great and natural love of woman; likewise it dawned upon her how false and wrong and sinful it would be to marry the greatest or the richest or the noblest man unless she had that supreme love to give him, and knew it was reciprocated.
"What am I going to do with my life?" she asked, bitterly and aghast."Ihave been--I am a waster.I've lived for nothing but pleasurable sensation.
I'm utterly useless.I do absolutely no good on earth."Thus she saw how Harrington's words rang true--how they had precipitated a crisis for which her unconscious brooding had long made preparation.
"Why not give up ideals and be like the rest of my kind?" she soliloquized.
That was one of the things which seemed wrong with modern life.She thrust the thought from her with passionate scorn.If poor, broken, ruined Glenn Kilbourne could cling to an ideal and fight for it, could not she, who had all the world esteemed worth while, be woman enough to do the same? The direction of her thought seemed to have changed.She had been ready for rebellion.Three months of the old life had shown her that for her it was empty, vain, farcical, without one redeeming feature.The naked truth was brutal, but it cut clean to wholesome consciousness.Such so-called social life as she had plunged into deliberately to forget her unhappiness had failed her utterly.If she had been shallow and frivolous it might have done otherwise.Stripped of all guise, her actions must have been construed by a penetrating and impartial judge as a mere parading of her decorated person before a number of males with the purpose of ultimate selection.
"I've got to find some work," she muttered, soberly.
At the moment she heard the postman's whistle outside; and a little later the servant brought up her mail.The first letter, large, soiled, thick, bore the postmark Flagstaff, and her address in Glenn Kilbourne's writing.
Carley stared at it.Her heart gave a great leap.Her hand shook.She sat down suddenly as if the strength of her legs was inadequate to uphold her.
"Glenn has--written me!" she whispered, in slow, halting realization."For what? Oh, why?"The other letters fell off her lap, to lie unnoticed.This big thick envelope fascinated her.It was one of the stamped envelopes she had seen in his cabin.It contained a letter that had been written on his rude table, before the open fire, in the light of the doorway, in that little log-cabin under the spreading pines of West Ford Canyon.Dared she read it?
The shock to her heart passed; and with mounting swell, seemingly too full for her breast, it began to beat and throb a wild gladness through all her being.She tore the envelope apart and read:
DEAR CARLEY:
I'm surely glad for a good excuse to write you.
Once in a blue moon I get a letter, and today Hutter brought me one from a soldier pard of mine who was with me in the Argonne.His name is Virgil Rust--queer name, don't you think?--and he's from Wisconsin.Just a rough-diamond sort of chap, but fairly well educated.He and I were in some pretty hot places, and it was he who pulled me out of a shell crater.I'd "gone west" sure then if it hadn't been for Rust.
Well, he did all sorts of big things during the war.Was down several times with wounds.He liked to fight and he was a holy terror.We all thought he'd get medals and promotion.But he didn't get either.These much-desired things did not always go where they were best deserved.
Rust is now lying in a hospital in Bedford Park.His letter is pretty blue, All he says about why he's there is that he's knocked out.But he wrote a heap about his girl.It seems he was in love with a girl in his home town--a pretty, big-eyed lass whose picture I've seen--and while he was overseas she married one of the chaps who got out of fighting.Evidently Rust is deeply hurt.He wrote: "I'd not care so...if she'd thrown me down to marry an old man or a boy who couldn't have gone to war." You see, Carley, service men feel queer about that sort of thing.It's something we got over there, and none of us will ever outlive it.Now, the point of this is that I am asking you to go see Rust, and cheer him up, and do what you can for the poor devil.It's a good deal to ask of you, I know, especially as Rust saw your picture many a time and knows you were my girl.But you needn't tell him that you--we couldn't make a go of it.
And, as I am writing this to you, I see no reason why I shouldn't go on in behalf of myself.