Rose MacLeod

								

"Electra," he said, "what do you want me to understand?"
"You do understand it, Peter," she said quietly. "I can hardly think you
will force me to state it explicitly."
"You can't mean it! no, you can't. You mustn't imply things, Electra.
You imply she was not married to him."
Still Electra was looking at him with that high demeanor which, he felt
with exasperation, seemed to make great demands upon him of a sort that
implied assumptions he must despise.
"This is very difficult for me," she was saying, and Peter at once
possessed himself of one passive hand.
"Of course it is difficult," he cried warmly. "I told her so. I told her
everything connected with Tom always was difficult. She knows that as
well as we do."
"Have you talked him over with her?" The tone was neutral, yet it
chilled him.
"Good Lord, yes! We've done nothing but talk him over from an outside
point of view. When she was deciding whether to come here, whether to
write you or just present herself as she has--of course Tom's name came
into it. She was Tom's wife, wasn't she? Tom's widow?"
"No! no!" said Electra, in a low and vehement denial. "She was not."
Peter blazed so that he seemed to tower like a long thin guidepost
showing the way to anger. "I said the same thing yesterday."
"That was before you saw her. It means more now, infinitely more."
"I hope it does."
"Think what you're saying, Electra," he said violently, so that she
lifted her hand slightly, as if to reprove him. "You refuse to receive
her--"
"I have received her,--as her father's daughter. I may even do so
again."
"But not as your sister?"
"That would be impossible. You must see it is impossible, feeling as I
do."
"But how, how? You imply things that dizzy me, and then, when it comes
to the pinch, I can't get a sane word out of you." That seemed to him,
as to her, an astonishing form of address to an imperial lady, and he
added at once, "Forgive me!" But he continued irrepressibly, "Electra,
you can't mean you doubt her integrity."
She had her counter question:--
"Did you see them married?"
"No, no, heavens, no! Why, I didn't come on Tom in Paris until his
illness. Tom never had any use for me. You know that. Meantime he'd been
there a couple of years, into the mire and out again, and he'd had time
to be married to Rose, and she'd had time to leave him."
"Ah, she left him! Why?"
"Why did you leave him, Electra, before he went over there? Why did you
give up living in town, and simply retreat down here? You couldn't stand
it. Nobody could. Tom was a bad egg, Electra. I don't need to tell you
that."
"It is certainly painful for me to hear it."
"But why, why, Electra? I can't stultify myself to prove this poor girl
an adventuress. I can't canonize Tom Fulton, not even if you ask me."
"There are things we need not recur to. My brother is dead," said
Electra, with dignity.
"Yes. That's precisely why I am asking you to provide for his widow."