t
know till aftawa'ds that I was glad to have you give up, the way you did
in Florence. I was--bewild'ed. But I ought to have known, and I want you
to undastand everything, now. I don't ca'e for you because I used to when
I was almost a child, and I shouldn't want you to ca'e for me eitha,
because you did then. That's why I wish you had neva felt that you had
always ca'ed fo' me."

"Yes," said Gregory. He let fall his head in despair.

"That is what I mean," said Clementina. "If we ah' going to begin
togetha, now, it's got to be as if we had neva begun before. And you
mustn't think, or say, or look as if the'e had been anything in oua lives
but ouaselves. Will you? Do you promise?" She stopped, and put her hand
on his breast, and pushed against it with a nervous vehemence.

"No!" he said. "I don't promise, for I couldn't keep my promise. What you
ask is impossible. The past is part of us; it can't be ignored any more
than it can be destroyed. If we take each other, it must be for all that
we have been as well as all that we are. If we haven't the courage for
that we must part."

He dropped the little one's hand which he had been holding, and moved a
few steps aside. "Don't!" she said. "They'll think I've made you," and he
took the child's hand again.

They had emerged from the shadow of the woods, and come in sight of her
father's house. Claxon was standing coatless before the door in full
enjoyment of the late afternoon air; his wife beside him, at sight of
Gregory, quelled a natural impulse to run round the corner of the house
from the presence of strangers.

"I wonda what they'a sayin'," she fretted.

"It looks some as if she was sayin' yes," said Claxon, with an impersonal
enjoyment of his conjecture. "I guess she saw he was bound not to take no
for an answa."

"I don't know as I should like it very much," his wife relucted. "Clem's
doin' very well, as it is. She no need to marry again."

"Oh, I guess it a'n't that altogetha. He's a good man." Claxon mused a
moment upon the figures which had begun to advance again, with the little
one between them, and then gave way in a burst of paternal pride, "And I
don't know as I should blame him so very much for wantin' Clem. She
always did want to be of moa use--But I guess she likes him too."

End of Project Gutenberg's Ragged Lady, Part 2, by William Dean Howells

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAGGED LADY, PART 2 ***

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