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Page 109

This was a new Stewart, a man she had never known. Marie recoiled
from him, eyed him nervously, sought in her childish mind for an
explanation. When at last she understood that he was sincere, she
broke down. Stewart, playing a new part and raw in it, found the
situation irritating. But Marie's tears were not entirely bitter.
Back of them her busy young mind was weaving a new warp of life,
with all of America for its loom. Hope that had died lived again.
Before her already lay that great country where women might labor
and live by the fruit of their labor, where her tawdry past would
be buried in the center of distant Europe. New life beckoned to
the little Marie that night in the old salon of Maria Theresa,
beckoned to her as it called to Stewart, opportunity to one, love
and work to the other. To America!

"I will go," she said at last simply. "And I will not trouble you
there."

"Good!" Stewart held out his hand and Marie took it. With a quick
gesture she held it to her cheek, dropped it.

Peter came back half an hour later, downcast but not hopeless. He
had not found Harmony, but life was not all gray. She was well,
still in Vienna, and--she had come back! She had cared then
enough to come back. To-morrow he would commence again, would
comb the city fine, and when he had found her he would bring her
back, the wanderer, to a marvelous welcome.

He found Stewart gone, and Marie feverishly overhauling her few
belongings by the salon lamp. She turned to him a face still
stained with tears but radiant with hope.

"Peter," she said gravely, "I must prepare my outfit. I go to
America."

"With Stewart?"

"Alone, Peter, to work, to be very good, to be something. I am
very happy, although--Peter, may I kiss you?"

"Certainly," said Peter, and took her caress gravely, patting her
thin shoulder. His thoughts were in the garden with Harmony, who
had cared enough to come back.

"Life," said Peter soberly, "life is just one damned thing after
another, isn't it?"

But Marie was anxiously examining the hem of a skirt.

The letter from Anita reached Stewart the following morning. She
said:--

"I have been thinking things over, Walter, and I am going to hurt
you very much--but not, believe me, without hurting myself.
Perhaps my uppermost thought just now is that I am disappointing
you, that I am not so big as you thought I would be. For now, in
this final letter, I can tell you how much I cared. Oh, my dear,
I did care!

"But I will not marry you. And when this reaches you I shall have
gone very quietly out of your life. I find that such philosophy
as I have does not support me to-night, that all my little rules
of life are inadequate. Individual liberty was one--but there is
no liberty of the individual. Life--other lives--press too
closely. You, living your life as seemed best and easiest, and
carrying down with you into shipwreck the little Marie
and--myself!

"For, face to face with the fact, I cannot accept it, Walter. It
is not only a question of my past against yours. It is of steady
revolt and loathing of the whole thing; not the flash of protest
before one succumbs to the inevitable, but a deep-seated hatred
that is a part of me and that would never forget.

"You say that you are the same man I would have married, only
more honest for concealing nothing. But--and forgive me this, it
insists on coming up in my mind--were you honest, really? You
told me, and it took courage, but wasn't it partly fear? What
motive is unmixed? Honesty--and fear, Walter. You were preparing
against a contingency, although you may not admit this to
yourself.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 29th Dec 2025, 2:33

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart