East Angels: A Novel

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"I could not be happy, how could I be? But at least I was safe. Then he left me that second time. And you were there; that was the hardest of all."

"You bore it well! I remember I found it impossible to get a word with you. The truth is, Margaret, I have never known you to falter, you are not faltering in the least even now. I can't quite believe, therefore, that you care for me as you say you do; you certainly don't care as I care for you, perhaps you can't. But the little you do give me is precious; for even that, small as it is, will keep you from going back to Lanse Harold."

"Keep me from going back? What do you suppose I have told you this for? Don't you see that it is exactly this—my feeling for you—that sends me, drives me back to him? On what plea, now, could I refuse to go? The pretense of unhappiness, of having been wronged?" She paused. Then rushed on again. "The law—of separation, I mean—is founded upon the idea that a wife is outraged, insulted, by her husband's desertion; but in my case Lanse's entire indifference to me, his estrangement—these have been the most precious possessions I have had! If at any time since almost the first moment I met you he had come back and asked for reconciliation, promised to be after that the most faithful of husbands, what would have become of me? what should I have said? But he did not ask—he does not now; I can only be profoundly grateful."

"Yes, compare yourself with a man of that sort—do; it's so just!"

"It is perfectly just. I am a woman, surrounded by all a woman's cowardice and nervousness and fear of being talked about; and he is a man, and not afraid; but at heart—at heart—how much better am I than he? You do not know—" She stopped. "I consider it a great part of my offense against my husband that I have never loved him," she added.

"The old story! Go on now and tell me that if you had loved him, he himself would have been better."

"No, that I cannot tell you; even if I had cared for him, I might have had no influence." She spoke with humility.

"Lanse knew perfectly that I did not love him, he knew it when I didn't," she went on. "And I really think—yes, I must say it—that if I had cared for him even slightly, he would have been more guarded, would have concealed more, spared me more; in little things, Lanse is kind. But he knew that I shouldn't suffer, in that way at least. And it was quite true; my real suffering—the worst suffering—has not come from him at all; it has come from you. At first I had plans—I was too young to give up all hope of something brighter some time. But my plans soon came to an end; when I knew—discovered—that I was beginning to care for you, all my hope turned to keeping in the one straight track that lay before me. I did not think I should fail—"

"I can well believe that!" he interrupted.

"Oh, do not be harsh to me! you do not know—You think my will is strong. But oh! it isn't—it isn't. When Lanse left me that second time, and you were there with me, I knew then that there was nothing for it but to go as far away from you as possible, and to go instantly; anything less, no matter how I should disguise it, would be staying because I wished to stay. And I did try to go; I would not enter that hotel when I saw you on the shore—I went back to the empty house. I dared not stay then. I will not now."