“You don’t?” his wife asked, sharply; and, in obvious pity for a poor understanding, characteristically manlike, she explained what she had instantly divined—her unhappy sister’s reason for coming to ask him to help her. “Julietta counts on your being with them as the answer to the talk about them. She intends to have a defence against the talk—an answer that will help to keep people on her side—and if you break your engagement without any explanation she’ll wonder what it means, and if we haven’t asked you to do it; and she’ll get John to find out. He’ll ask you why you didn’t come. Then you can tell him you stayed away because you’re troubled about what Mildred may think. It’s all you need say, and he’ll speak to Mildred about it. That will give her a chance to talk to him.”
“Is it what you want, Mildred?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s the only thing I can think of. It gives me a chance to talk to him, that’s all. It may make him despise me, anyhow. I don’t know what he’ll say, but I’ve got to do it;—I can’t go on any longer not saying anything! Perhaps”—her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she could not speak—“perhaps he’ll ask me for a divorce. Well, if he does, I’ll give it to him!”
“No, no!” her sister cried. “You said you wanted to protect him!”
“If he doesn’t love me any more, I couldn’t,” Mildred sobbed, for her struggle to control herself was lost now, and her weeping became convulsive. “Don’t you see I couldn’t? You can’t protect anybody that’s tired of you. If he’s tired of you, how can you protect him against someone he’s in love with?”
“My dear sister!” Hobart begged her, deeply moved. “Don’t think it. Old John isn’t in love with Julietta Voss any more than I am!”
“How do I know?” she sobbed. “He acts as if he is. What other way is there to tell? How do I know?” And, clinging to his hand, she sank down into the chair beside which she had been standing. “Oh, Hobart, you must help me; you must try your best to help me!”
“Indeed I will,” he promised, with all the earnestness that was in him. “I’ll do anything in the world, Mildred—absolutely anything!”
He meant it indeed; but over the bowed form of the unhappy lady who clung to his hand, entreating him, he looked into the denouncing and skeptical eyes of his wife. She needed no words, nor anything except those implacable eyes of hers, to tell him that his own recent behaviour was in great part responsible for the misery before them, and that he lacked the power to make up to Mildred for what he had done.
He adored his wife, and he took that look of hers as a challenge.