The Helpmate | Page 6

Edith made
me pretty well believe you did."
He was silent a while, trying to fathom the reason of his sister's strange
duplicity. Apparently he gave it up.
"You can't be a brute to a poor little woman with a bad spine," said he;
"but I'm not going to forgive Edith for that."
Anne flamed through her pallor. "For what?" she said. "For not having
had more courage than yourself? Think what you put on her."

"I didn't. She took it on herself. Edith's got courage enough for anybody.
She would never admit that her spine released her from all moral
obligations. But I suppose she meant well."
The spirit of the grey, cold morning seemed to have settled upon Anne.
She gazed sternly out over the eastern sea. Preoccupied with what he
considered Edith's perfidy, he failed to understand his wife's silence
and her mood.
"Edith's very fond of you. You won't let this make any difference
between you and her?"
"Between her and me it can make no difference. I am very fond of
Edith."
"But the fact remains that you married me under false pretences? Is that
what you mean?"
"You may certainly put it that way."
"I understand your point of view completely. I wish you could
understand mine. When Edith said there were things she could have
told you that I couldn't, she meant that there were extenuating
circumstances."
"They would have made no difference."
"Excuse me, they make all the difference. But, of course, there's no
extenuation for deception. Therefore, if you insist on putting it that
way--if--if it has made the whole thing intolerable to you, it seems to
me that perhaps I ought, don't you know, to release you from your
obligations----"
She looked at him. She knew that he had understood the meaning and
the depth of her repugnance. She did not know that such understanding
is rare in the circumstances, nor could she see that in itself it was a
revelation of a certain capacity for the "goodness" she had once
believed in. But she did see that she was being treated with a delicacy

and consideration she had not expected of this man with the strange
devil. It touched her in spite of her repugnance. It made her own that
she had expected nothing short of it until yesterday.
"Do you insist?" he went on. "After what I've told you?"
"After what you've told me--no. I'm ready to believe that you did not
mean to deceive me."
"Doesn't that make any difference?" he asked tenderly.
"Yes. It makes some difference--in my judgment of you."
"You mean you're not--as Edith would say--going to be too hard on
me?"
"I hope," said Anne, "I should never be too hard on any one."
"Then," he inquired, eager to be released from the strain of a most
insupportable situation, "what are we going to do next?"
He had assumed that the supreme issue had been decided by a polite
evasion; and his question had been innocent of all momentous meaning.
He merely wished to know how they were going to spend the day that
was before them, since they had to spend days, and spend them
together. But Anne's tense mind contemplated nothing short of the
supreme issue that, for her, was not to be evaded, nor yet to be decided
hastily.
"Will you leave me alone," she said, "to think it over? Will you give me
three hours?"
He stared and turned pale; for, this time, he understood.
"Certainly," he said coldly, rising and taking out his watch. "It's twelve
now."
"At three, then?"

They met at three o'clock. Anne had spent one hour of bewilderment
out of doors, two hours of hard praying and harder thinking in her
room.
Her mind was made up. However notorious her husband had been,
between him and her there was to be no open rupture. She was not
going to leave him, to appeal to him for a separation, to deny him any
right. Not that she was moved by a profound veneration for the legal
claim. Marriage was to her a matter of religion even more than of law.
And though, at the moment, she could no longer discern its sacramental
significance through the degraded aspect it now wore for her, she
surrendered on the religious ground. The surrender would be a
martyrdom. She was called upon to lay down her will, but not to
subdue the deep repugnance of her soul.
Protection lay for her in Walter's chivalry, as she well knew. But she
would not claim it. Chastened and humbled, she would take up her
wedded life again. There was no vow that she would not keep, no duty
she would not fulfil. And she would remain in her place of peace,
building up between