He withdrew his hand from hers to cover his eyes with it. He spoke hoarsely: "It may be. I—I think it is."
"But, if it is, then the spirit of the contract is different now from what it would have been—well, you know when. Then it meant that I should have stood by you—forgiven you, if that's the word—and shown myself truly your wife, for better or for worse. I didn't understand that. I only knew about the better. I didn't see that a man and a woman might take each other for worse—and still be true. If I had seen it—oh, what a happy woman I should have been to-day, and in all these years in which I haven't been happy at all! That was the spirit of the contract then, I suppose—but now it's different. It confuses me a little. Doesn't it confuse you?"
"Perhaps."
"Let me take your hand again; I can talk to you better like that. Now—now—we've undertaken new responsibilities. We've involved others. We've let them involve themselves. We can't turn our back upon them, can we? No. I thought that's what you'd say. We can't. The contract we've made with them must come before the one we made with each other. We're bound, not only in law but in honor. Aren't we?"
He made some inarticulate sign of assent.
"And I suppose that's what he meant by the penalty—the penalty in its extreme form: that we've put ourselves where we can't keep the higher contract, the complete one, we made together—because we're bound by one lower and incomplete, to which we've got to be faithful. Isn't that the spirit now, don't you think?"
Again he muttered something inarticulately assenting.
"Well, then, Chip, I'm going." She rose with the words.
"No, no; not yet." He caught her hand in both of his, holding it as he leaned across the table.
"Yes, Chip, now. What do we gain by my staying? We see the thing we've got to do—and we must do it. We must begin on the instant. If I were to stay a minute longer now, it would be—it would be for things we've recognized as no longer permissible. I'm going. I'm going now!"