“Really!” Miss Arbuthnot came over and sat down on the divan beside the girl. “You look so young,” she said, rather wistfully. “And you have been married four years?”
The girl nodded. “It seems much longer,” she said. “I have had—a great deal of trouble.”
“Tell me about it,” said the older woman kindly. But the girl was much embarrassed at the idea of talking of her own little affairs to Professor Arbuthnot.
“I am afraid it would only bore you,” she said, hurriedly. “Your interests—you are interested in so many——”
But Miss Arbuthnot was firm. “Let me hear,” she insisted.
“I’m sure I hardly know what there is to tell,” the girl began nervously. “My father was much opposed to my marrying Julian. He did not wish me to leave college; and he did not believe in cousins marrying. He said that if we did he would disinherit me—you know he is rich. But Julian and I were in love with each other, and so of course we got married.” She stopped suddenly and drawing off her glove looked at her wedding-ring. Professor Arbuthnot watched her curiously. The girl’s simple statement—“and of course we got married” struck her forcibly. She wondered what it would feel like to be swayed by an emotion so powerful that a father’s commands and the loss of a fortune would have absolutely no influence upon it. She could not remember ever having felt anything like that.
“Julian was awfully poor and I of course had nothing more, and so we went to Texas—Julian had an opening there,” she went on. “It was awfully lonely—we lived ten miles from the nearest town—and you know what a Texas town is.” Miss Arbuthnot shook her head. She had never been west of Ohio.
The girl gave a little in-drawn gasp. “Well, it’s worse than anything you can conceive of. I think one has to live in one of them and then move away and have ten miles of dead level prairie land between you and it to know just what loneliness is. But we were so happy, so happy at first—until Julian was taken ill.” She leaned back against the couch and clasped her hands around her knees.
“It was awful—I can’t tell you,” she went on in a broken voice. “But you know what unspeakable agony it is to see what you love best on earth ill and suffering, and you nearly powerless to do a thing. And how I loved him! I never knew until then what he was—how much of my life he had become. You must know what agony I went through?” she looked interrogatively, beseechingly at the woman beside her.
Miss Arbuthnot looked away. “I am not sure—I—I was never in love,” she said uncertainly. A curious wave of jealousy swept over her that she who had been such a student, whose whole life had been a study, should have somehow missed experiences that this girl had lived through already. The girl shook her head softly, pityingly, as if she could hardly believe her.