Murder in Any Degree eBook

Owen Johnson
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 225 pages of information about Murder in Any Degree.

Murder in Any Degree eBook

Owen Johnson
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 225 pages of information about Murder in Any Degree.

“That is why I shall never give up my career.  That is why I can bear the sadness of leaving you.  I want you to be proud of me, Ben.  I want you to think of me as some one whom thousands desire and only you can have.  I want our love to be so intense that every day spent apart is heavy with the longing for each other; every day together precious because it will be a day nearer the awful coming of another separation.  Believe me, I am right.  I have thought much about it.  You have your diplomatic career and your ambitions.  You are proud.  I have never asked you to give that up to follow me.  I would not insult you.  In January you will have a leave of absence, and we will be together for a few wonderful weeks, and in May I shall return here.  Nothing will be changed.”  She extended her arm to where a faint red point still showed on the unseen water.  “And each night we will wait, as we have waited, side by side, the coming of our little boat,—­notre p’tit bateau

“You are right,” he said, placing his lips to her forehead.  “I was jealous.  I am sorry.  It is over.”

“But I, too, am jealous,” she said, smiling.

“You?”

“Of course—­no one can love without being jealous.  Oh, I shall be afraid of every woman who comes near you.  It will be an agony,” she said, and the fire in her eyes brought him more healing happiness than all her words.

“You are right,” he repeated.

He left her with a little pressure of the hand, and walked to the edge of the veranda.  A nervous, sighing breeze had come with the full coming of the moon, and underneath him he heard the troubled rustle of leaves in the obscurity, the sifting and drifting of tired, loose things, the stir of the night which awakened a restless mood in his soul.  He had listened to her as she had proclaimed her love, and yet this love, without illusions, sharply recalled to him other passions.  He remembered his first love, a boy-and-girl affair, and sharply contrasting it with a sudden ache to this absence of impulse and illusions, of phrases, vows, without logic, thrown out in the sweet madness of the moment.  Why had she not cried out something impulsive, promised things that could not be.  Then he realized, standing there in the harvest moonlight, in the breaking up of summer, that he was no longer a youth, that certain things could not be lived over, and that, as she had said, he too felt that this was the great love, the last that he would share; that if it ended, his youth ended and with his youth all that in him clung to life.

He turned and saw her, chin in the flat of her palm, steadily following his mood.  He had taken but a dozen steps, and yet he had placed a thousand miles between them.  He had almost a feeling of treachery, and to dispel these new unquiet thoughts he repeated to himself again: 

“She is right.”

But he did not immediately return.  The memory of other loves, faint as they had been in comparison with this all-absorbing impulse, had yet given him a certain objective point of view.  He saw himself clearly, and he understood what of pain the future had in store for him.

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Project Gutenberg
Murder in Any Degree from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.