“Why not?” asked Emily.
“Because it is certain to end in failure—absolutely certain.”
Emily looked uncomfortable, “I don’t see why,” she said, somewhat irritably. “Don’t you think people can get too much of each other?”
“Certainly—and in marriage they always do; but if it’s to be a marriage, if there’s to be anything permanent about it, they must live together, see each other constantly, become completely united in the same current of life; all their interests must be in common, and they must have a common destiny and must never forget it.”
“But that isn’t love,” objected Emily.
“No, it isn’t love—love of the kind we’re all crazy about nowadays. But it is married love—and that’s the kind we’re talking about. If I were married I shouldn’t let my husband out of my sight for a minute, except when it was necessary. I’d see to it that we became one. If he were the stronger, he’d be the one. If I were the stronger, I’d be the one—but I’d try to be generous.”
Emily laughed at this picture of tyranny, so directly opposed to her own ideas and to her own tyranny over her husband. She mocked Joan for entertaining such “barbaric notions.” But later in the day, she caught herself saying, with a sigh she’d have liked to believe was not regret, “It’s too late now.”
There were days when she liked him, hours when she wrought herself into an exaltation which was a feeble but deceptive imitation of his adoration of her—and how he did adore her then, how he did strain to clasp her more tightly, believing her still his, and not heeding instinctive, subtle warnings that she was slipping from him. But in contrast to these days of liking and hours of loving were her longer periods of indifference and, occasionally, of weariness.
Early in the summer, there was a revival of her interest—a six weeks’ separation from him; an attack of the “blues,” of loneliness; a sudden appreciation of the strength and comfort of the habit which a husband had become with her.
On a Friday evening in June he was coming to dine, and Miss Gresham was dining out. He arrived twenty minutes late. “I’ve been making my arrangements to sail to-morrow,” he explained. “You can come on the Wednesday or Saturday steamer—if you can arrange to leave on such short notice.”