"I do, but we both have to remember that you didn't."
"Neither did I marry Mr. Brokenshire. I was handed over to him. When Lady Mary Hamilton was handed over in that way to the Prince of Monaco the Pope annulled the marriage. We knew her afterward in Budapest, married to some one else. If there's such a thing as right, as you're so fond of saying, I ought to be considered free."
I was holding both her hands as I said:
"Don't try to make yourself free. Let life do it."
"Life!" she cried, with a passionate vehemence I scarcely knew to be in her. "It's life that—"
"Treat life as a friend and not as an enemy. Trust it; wait for it. Don't hurry it, or force it, or be impatient with it. I can't believe that essentially it's hard or cruel or a curse. If it comes from God, it must be good and beautiful. In proportion as we cling to the good and beautiful we must surely get the thing we ought to have."
Though I cannot say that she accepted this doctrine, it helped her over a day or two, leaving me free for the time being to give my attention to my own affairs. Having no natural stamina, the poor, lovely little creature lived on such mental and spiritual pick-me-ups as I was able to administer. Whenever she was specially in despair, which was every forty-eight or sixty hours, she came back to me, and I did what I could to brace her for the next short step of her way. I find it hard to explain the intensity of her appeal to me. I suppose I must have submitted to that spell of the perfect face which had bewitched Stacy Grainger and Howard Brokenshire. I submitted also to her child-like helplessness. God knows I am not a heroine. Any little fright or difficulty upsets me. As compared with her, however, I was a giant refreshed with wine. When her lip quivered, or when the sudden mist drifted across her eyes, obscuring their forget-me-not blue with violet, my yearning was exactly that which makes any woman long to take any suffering baby in her arms. For this reason she didn't tax my patience, nor had I that impulse to scold or shake her to which another woman of such obvious limitations would have driven me. Touched as I was by the aching heart, I was captivated by the perfect face; and I couldn't help it.
Thus through the rest of February and into March my chief occupation was in keeping Howard Brokenshire's wife as true to him as the conditions rendered possible. In the intervals I comforted Hugh, and beat off Larry Strangways, and sat rigidly still while Stacy Grainger prowled round me with fierce, suspicious, melancholy eyes, like those of a cowed tiger. Afraid of him as I was, it filled me with grim inward amusement to discover that he was equally afraid of me. He came into the library from time to time, when he happened to be at his house, and like Mrs. Brokenshire gave me the impression that the frustration of their love was my fault. As I sat primly and severely at my desk, and he stalked round and round the room, stabbing the old gentleman who classified prints and the lady who collated the early editions of Shakespeare with contemptuous glances, I knew that in his sight I represented—poor me!—that virtuous respectability the sinner always holds in scorn. He could not be ignorant of the fact that if it hadn't been for me Mrs. Brokenshire would have been meeting him elsewhere, and so he held me as an enemy. Had he not known that I was something besides an enemy he would doubtless have sent me about my business.
In one of the intervals of this portion of the drama I received a visit that took me by surprise. Early in the afternoon of a day in March, Mrs. Billing trotted into the library, followed by Lady Cecilia Boscobel. It was the sort of occasion on which I should have been nervous enough in any case, but it became terrifying when Mrs. Billing marched up to my desk and pointed at me with her lorgnette, saying over her shoulder, "There she is," as though I was a portrait.
I struggled to my feet with what was meant to be a smile.