He detested liars and lies. Yet, looking on her as a sort of child—and it's no harm to humor a child—he said, "I hope not."
He blushed as he said it, though his conscience was assuring him there was absolutely nothing wrong in this kind of playful deception with woman the whimsical, the irrational. "Certainly not," thought he. "She'll soon forget all about it. I don't see how she happened to remember so long as this." Still, it was not pleasant to tell even the whitest of white lies, facing eyes so earnest and so trusting as were hers just then. He changed the subject—inquired who had been calling. She did not return to it. She was content; his long hours and his complete absorption were proof of his eagerness to hasten the day when they should be together. "Of course," thought she, "he likes what he's doing—likes it for itself. But the reason is 'us.'" And some day soon he would surprise her—and they would begin to lead the life of true lovers—the life she had dreamed and planned as a girl—the life she had begun to realize during courtship and honeymoon—the life of which, even in these days of aloneness and waiting, she had occasional foretastes when overpowering impulse for a "lighter hour" brought him back to her for a little while.
She had been puzzled when in those hours he sometimes called her "temptress." The word was tenderly spoken, but she felt an accent of what was somehow suggestion of reproach—and of rebuke. Now she thought she understood. He meant she stimulated in him the same deep longings that incessantly possessed her; and when those longings were stimulated, it was hard for him to keep his mind on the work he was hastening with all his energy—the work that must be done before their happiness could begin. "I must be careful not to tempt him," thought she.
From this she went on to feel she understood another matter that had puzzled her, had at times disquieted her. She had noticed that his moods of caressing tenderness, of longing for the outward evidences of love seemed to be satisfied, and to cease just when her own delight in them was swelling to its fullness. Why should what roused her quiet him? This had been the puzzle; now she felt she had solved it: He had greater self-control than she; he would not let his feelings master him, when they would certainly interfere with the work that must be done to clear their way of the last obstacles to perfect happiness; so he withdrew into himself and fought down the longings for more and ever more love that were no doubt as strong in him as in her.
Thus she, in her faith and her inexperience, reasoned it all out to her satisfaction and to his glory. She had not the faintest notion of the abysmal difference between her idea of love and his. With her the caresses had their chief value as symbols—as the only means by which the love within could convey news of its existence. With Dick, the caresses were not symbols at all, not means to an end, but the end in themselves. Of love such as she dreamed and expected he knew nothing; for it he felt no more need than the usual busy, ambitious man. His work, his struggle to wrest from nature close-guarded secrets, filled his mind and his heart.
He soon assumed she had forgotten her fantastic whim, and forgot it himself. She often wished he would talk to her about his work, would not be quite so discouraging when she timidly tried to talk with him about it. And in spite of herself she could not but be uneasy at times over his growing silence, his habitual absentmindedness. But she accepted it all, as loving inexperience will accept anything and everything—until the shock of disillusion comes. So stupefying is habit, there were times when her dream became vague, when she drifted along, leading, as if it were to be permanent, the ordinary life of the modern married woman whose husband is a busy man. She was learning a great deal about that life from her young married friends of the neighborhood and of Wenona. Many of them—in fact, most of them—were husbanded much like herself. But they were restless, unhappy, and for the best of reasons—because they had no aim, no future. She pitied them profoundly, felt more and more grateful for her own happier lot. For she—Dick's wife—had a future, bright and beautiful. Surely it could not be much longer before he would have the way clear for the life in common, the life together!
She fell to talking, in a less light vein than she usually permitted herself with him, about these friends of hers to him one evening as they walked up and down the veranda after supper. She described with some humor, but an underlying seriousness, their lives—their amusing, but also pitiful, efforts to kill time—their steady decline toward inanity. "I don't see what they married for," said she. "They really care nothing about their husbands—or their husbands about them. The men seem to be contented. But the women aren't, though they pretend to be—pretend to their husbands! Isn't it all sad and horrible?"
"Indeed it is," he replied. He had been only half listening, but had caught the drift of what she was saying. "It's hard to believe decent women can be like that."
"And the men—they're worse," said she; "for they're satisfied."
"Why shouldn't they be?" said Dick. "They don't know what kind of wives they've got."