If I really and truly
loved Jack Fyfe, I'd be a jealous little fury if he so much as looked at
another woman. But I don't, and I don't see why I don't. I want to be
loved; I want to love. I've always wanted that so much that I'll never
dare trust my instincts about it again. I wonder why people like me
exist to go blundering about in the world, playing havoc with themselves
and everybody else?"
Before she reached home, that self-sacrificing mood had vanished in the
face of sundry twinges of pride. Jack Fyfe hadn't asked her to come
back; he never would ask her to come back. Of that she was quite sure.
She knew the stony determination of him too well. Neither hope or
heaven nor fear of hell would turn him aside when he had made a
decision. If he ever had moments of irresolution, he had successfully
concealed any such weakness from those who knew him best. No one ever
felt called upon to pity Jack Fyfe, and in those rocked-ribbed
qualities, Stella had an illuminating flash, perhaps lay the secret of
his failure ever to stir in her that yearning tenderness which she knew
herself to be capable of lavishing, which her nature impelled her to
lavish on some one.
"Ah, well," she sighed, when she came back to her rooms and put Fyfe's
letter away in a drawer. "I'll do the decent thing if they ask me. I
wonder what Jack would say if he knew what I've been debating with
myself this afternoon? I wonder if we were actually divorced and I'd
made myself a reputation as a singer, and we happened to meet quite
casually sometime, somewhere, just how we'd really feel about each
other?"
She was still musing on that, in a detached, impersonal fashion, when
she caught a car down to the theater for the matinee.
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