It was not true, she knew it was not true, yet a strange necessity for self-torture forced her to repeat the cruel words, as it forced her often to remind Stewart that it was time for him to hasten to some appointment, to drive or to lunch with Mrs. Thrall, who much enjoyed displaying publicly the devotion of her actor-husband. And once, when Sybil had longed to attend a sacred concert that offered her an only opportunity to hear a certain great singer, she had been forced either to accept Roberts's escort or remain at home, because Mr. Thrall learned at the last moment that Lettice had invited a large party, who were to return afterward and sup with them in the informal way "dear Stewart so enjoys." And, having swiftly decided in favor of a long evening of loneliness at home, taking a bitter pleasure in her own suffering, she had tried to hasten his departure, saying: "A man should never keep his wife waiting."
And in sudden passion, shamed, wounded, angry, he had turned upon her, forbidding her ever to so misapply that word again. "If you must call her Mrs. Thrall, well, be it so—that is enough to bear!"
But Sybil pressed upon the wound, insisting obstinately: "But she is your wife!" and he had doggedly contradicted: "No! no! She is a sort of legalized money-changer in the temple of marriage! She is not a wife! Our wedded life is a monstrous hypocrisy! We are false to ourselves, false to society, false in word, deed, and thought! And yet she is a good woman, whose legal and technical virtue would certainly have given her the valued right to hurl rocks at the woman taken in adultery. Wife? She? The woman whose companionship dragged me down to a lower level than that at which she found me? Oh, I see in your cloudy, scornful face your contempt for the man who blames a woman, and Lettice Rowland Thrall should not be censured for not giving what she has not to give! But oh, her chains are very heavy, and my bondage grows more bitter day by day! Sometimes I think that I could welcome the death that, taking me from you, beloved, would at least free me from her!"
Frankness was so natural to Sybil's nature that the secrecy and stratagem of intrigue wearied her; the manœuvring, the clandestine, the sly, the underhand, shamed her. She knew now the secret of the window-curtained door in Thrall's private office, opening on a narrow passage that led up a stair to another door opening in turn behind a wardrobe in a dressing-room—her dressing-room now these three years. And Jim Roberts knew of it, too; she wondered why, and reddened as she glanced toward a key that lay in an open desk-drawer.
"Oh!" she groaned, "how can I bear it! I love him! I love him! but it is not right that love should bring only dishonor! I do not need churchly vows to keep me loyal! I shall be faithful till I die; but I am a woman, and I long for the privileges and prerogatives that marriage gives—and that she receives!"
She thought that she hid her suffering—she tried to do so, and sometimes, in her work, forgot for a while her false position and the weight of the chains she had herself forged. But those brilliant blue eyes saw more than she guessed; and always, beside the growing hatred of his bitter bondage, there was the agony of fear that this young creature, made to win love, would weary of the double life, would some day be sought by one brave enough to take her to wife—knowing all there was to know! He saw glowing admiration in the eyes of men young and free, and he cursed them in his heart for their freedom, for he knew he had no claim upon her, no legal tie bound her to him. She, the wife of his heart and soul, might turn from him. Her beautiful, cloudy face might flash into smiles for another, should she weary of him and of his secret love. Therefore his days, too, were often days of torment, and the blonde woman, who watched them both with cold, keen eyes, knew much and understood perfectly. She believed the taste for forbidden fruit was common to all men. Thrall's conduct in the past had done little to dispel that belief; but she knew now that his love for the beautiful, gifted girl, whose faith he longed to justify by wedding her, was a real—and oh! galling thought—a loyal love! In the past her suspicions had often borne fruit, and she could recall certain gas-lit, laughing trysts, very scant of secrecy, mere counterfeit amours, that he had lived to loathe, and she knew that this was no such caprice.
When he escaped for a little, she knew that he was at the feet of the girl whose sombre eyes were so woful that sometimes they moved her heart to a faint throb of pity. A nobler, warmer, more self-sacrificing woman would have set them free, to find a purer faith, to form happier ties. But Lettice, forced to realize the existence of this great mutual love, this loyal passion, watched, and slowly grew to hate—intensely, bitterly to hate—them both. Verily a noxious plant is illegitimate love, and its poison far-reaching!
"Oh! Dorothy!" cried Sybil to the silent walls; "dear little mother to be! I shall be so thankful when you can once more bring a breath of honesty, of every-day open frankness, into this house!"
And then she heard a step, light but firm, coming from the back of the hall, and the blood rushed into her face as she sprang to her feet, for her fear was great lest the approaching man might read her grieving thoughts in her face.
He entered, and, tossing a bunch of violets to the table, came to her, and, taking her in his arms, buried his face in the cloudy, dark hair that had always tempted him. Presently he said: "I should have been here earlier, sweetheart, for I thought you would be lonely after your people's departure." (She looked gratefully at him.) "But Jim kept me; yes, he has broken loose again, and though I had someone take him home and look after him, I was so doubtful of his being able to play to-night that I gave his small part to an understudy, and that all took time."