“Man,” he broke out passionately, “it drove me nearly mad, with the combined madness of grief and jealous rage. I knew I loved her, but until I saw myself losing her I never realized how much she meant to me, how my life was bound up in her. I humiliated myself, pleaded and raved and threatened. It seemed to me a madness that had stricken her. I couldn’t see why such a thing had to be. There we were, happy, I thought, in our companionship. We had our home, our little circle of friends, all the beautiful plans for the future that, we’d made together. Nothing seemed to count—nothing but the fact that she loved some other man and no longer cared for me—that she was living a lie, and that she was not going to live a lie any longer.
“I didn’t know the other man. I never saw him, never learned his name even. I never could visualize him, somehow. But he was there somewhere in the background, with her hopes and dreams focused on him. I couldn’t seem to grasp that phase of it, why she should turn away from me, when she had loved me once, as I know she did. We’d had our differences. Every man and woman living in the intimacy of marriage has them. They were trifling things to me, I don’t even know if it was a mere succession of petty irritations that brought it about. But there it was. And while she was sorry, while she regretted it, there was only the one way out as she saw it. She had to get away from me, to live her own life in her own way. In every bitter discussion that I forced on her when I was lashing out against the impending break I dreaded so, I could see that she was getting farther and farther away from me, that I had no power to stir in her any emotion except resentment, and a little pity.
“So I threw up my hands. I wanted to play fair, as she had played fair. She wanted to be free, and she was financially dependent on me alone. I cherished a glimmer of hope that she’d come to her senses—as I put it—at the last minute. But she didn’t. And so I sacrificed everything, turned it all into cash. I didn’t care. Hell, there was a while I didn’t know what I was doing. I had to get quick action or go mad. She was leaving me, but I didn’t want economic need to drive her into another man’s arms before she was ready. She wanted to avoid that herself. Oh, we talked it over time and again, talked soberly and sensibly when I felt like shutting off the breath in her white throat rather than let her go. That was only white-hot jealousy. I couldn’t help it, but I did control it. When I’d cleaned up everything I had about eighteen thousand dollars in cash, and I’d wrecked the foundation of a fortune. But that seemed nothing beside this other dread thing that was happening. That gnawed at me day and night. And I had to move with caution, to avoid open scandal. I wanted to save her that. Oh, it was maddening! But the time came at last. I kept five thousand and gave her the rest. And I hit the trail. I had to. I’ve been hitting it ever since.
“I never heard from her. I don’t know how she’s faring. I do know that I can’t get away from the hurt of it. I’ve lost something more than my mate. The heart to buck up and make life give me those things I used to value is clean gone. I strewed that five thousand dear across the continent trying to make myself forget. But I didn’t. You can’t knife a man that way without leaving a sore wound. I peg along from day to day. But when I think of doing otherwise, when I think of trying to start all over again, I find myself asking ‘What’s the use?’ If I could shut out all those old memories. But I can’t. My mind keeps eternally on them, like this back eddy, circling around what was and might have been and can’t be. I’m a Samson shorn, without the mercy of perishing when the pillars of my house fell about me.”
Joe stopped and drew the palm of his hand over his forehead. His eyes were glistening. He stared for a minute out over the uneasy gulf, unseeing, over Broderick’s head. And Broderick’s gaze was fixed on him with a queer, half-pitying expression.
“Didn’t you ever go back or write to find out if, after all, your wife might have been the victim of an illusion and only realized it when you stepped out of her life?” Broderick asked carelessly.
Joe shook his head.
“No,” said he. “I didn’t give her up without a struggle, and when I had to I let go completely. I couldn’t persuade myself to make another effort. She knew her own mind, and she held to her determination when it was making me suffer like the damned. She was sorry. But I didn’t want her pity. I wanted her love.”
“You don’t get my point,” Broderick pursued. “If you ask me, I’d say you acted like a fool—any man’s a fool to take a woman’s actions for granted until she’s committed herself irrevocably. You’ve been eating your heart out for four years, and yet you don’t even know but what she’s suffering as much as you do—aching for you to come back. For all you know, the very moment that you were gone and she was free to marry the other man, it may have dawned on her that she didn’t want to, that you filled a place in her life no one else could possibly fill. I don’t think you’ve got a very comprehensive knowledge of women, Joe, or of human nature in general. You two loved each other. All right. That being so, you passed together through that peculiar ecstasy of feeling that burns like a flame at mating, and, like a flame, sometimes burns out—but always leaves smoldering embers. A man and a woman can only have that emotional experience at its full intensity, once. When you have had it, it’s something that no one and nothing can take away. Its impressions can’t be ironed out as you can iron the wrinkles out of a piece of cloth. It’s a bond between a man and a woman as long as their hearts beat. Do you suppose that the hundred and one associations of your life together meant nothing to your wife?”
“They didn’t seem to,” Joe answered sullenly. “She was sick of it all. She thought she saw happiness in another direction.”