The Letter of the Contract | Page 9

away from you a little."
"And in the mean time you may be risking your happiness and mine."
She shot him a reproachful glance. "Do you say that?"
"Yes, Edith, I do say it. If I've broken the letter of the contract, you may be transgressing its spirit. Don't forget that. Take care. What I did, I did because I couldn't help it. You can help it--"
"Oh no, I can't. That's where you haven't understood me. You say I don't see things from your point of view, and perhaps I don't. But neither do you see them from mine. You wonder why I don't go over there"--she nodded toward the house--"where I had my home--where my children have theirs--where you and I ... But I can't. That's all I can say. I may do it some day; I don't know. But just now--I couldn't drag myself up the steps. It would mean that we were going on as before, when all that--that sort of thing--seems to me so--so utterly over."
"You'll feel differently when you've had time to think."
"Perhaps I shall. And time to think is all I'm asking. You understand that, don't you? that I'm not making anything definite--yet. If I can ever come back to you, I will. But if I can't--"
"Hello, mama! Hello, papa!" The elder boy galloped up. "We've seen the monkeys. And one great big monkey looked like--"
"All?, maman! All?, papa! N's avons vu les singes--mais des dr?les! Il y en avait un qui--"
The children caught their father round the knees. Stooping, he put his arms about them, urging them toward their mother. They were to plead for him--to be his advocates.
"Tell mama," he whispered to the older boy, "not to go to Aunt Emily's to-night. Tell her we can't do without her--that we want her at home." He turned to the younger. "Dis à maman que tu vas pleurer si elle te quitte ce soir--qu'il faut qu'elle vienne t'écouler dire la prière."
But, when he raised himself, Edith was already walking swiftly up the Avenue. He would have followed her, only that the children seemed to restrain him, clinging to his knees. All he could do was to watch her--watch her while the thronging crowds and the shimmering sun-shot dust of the golden afternoon blotted her from his sight--and the great city-world out of which he had received her took her back.

II
RESENTMENT
It was a strange sensation to be free. It was still more strange that it was not a sensation. It was a kind of numbness. She could only feel that she didn't feel. In spite of her repeated silent assertions, "I'm free! I'm free!" any consciousness of change eluded her.
It was true that there had been a moment like a descent into hell, from which she thought she must come up another woman. Aunt Emily and the lawyer had whirled her somewhere in a motor. Veiled as heavily as was consistent with articulation, she had told a tale that seemed abominable, though it was no more than a narrative of the facts. It added to her sense of degradation to learn that one of the cheaper dailies had published a snapshot of her taken as she was re-entering the motor to come away. But even the horror of that moment passed, as something too unreal to be other than a dream, and, except that she and the children were staying with Aunt Emily instead of in their own home, all was as before. All was as before to a disappointing degree--to a degree that maddened her.
It maddened her because it brought no appeasement to that which for more than a year had been her dominating motive--to do something to Chip that would bring home to him a realizing sense of what he had done to her. It was not that she wanted revenge. She was positive as to that. She wanted only to make him understand. Hitherto he hadn't understood. She had seen that in all his letters, right up to the moment when, driven to despair by what seemed to her his moral obtuseness, she had implored him not to write again. It was to help him to understand that which he was either unable or unwilling to understand that she had so resolutely refused to see him--partly that, and partly Aunt Emily. She would have died if it hadn't been for Aunt Emily--died or given in; and the mere thought of giving in frightened her.
It frightened her chiefly because she possessed the capacity to do it. In a way it would be easier to do it than not--easier to do it, and yet impossible to go on with the new situation thus created after it was done. It would mean being back in the old home and resuming the old life; there would be what people