So, the immediate result of Armitage’s talk was a gentler and thoroughly tolerant frame of mind toward my wife, both as to herself and as to what she had done to our daughter. After all, I had for wife only the typical woman—and a rarely sweet and charming example of the type. And my daughter was no worse, perhaps was better, than the average girl of her age and position. What did I think I had—or ought to have—in the way of wife and daughter, anyhow? What was this vague, sentimental dream of family life? If I were by some magic to find myself possessed of the sort of family I thought I wanted, wouldn’t I be more dissatisfied than at present? When I had a wife and a daughter who looked so well and did nothing but what everyone around me regarded as right and proper, was I not unjust in my discontent?
I had not seen Edna or Margot for several days before my talk with Bob Armitage. I did not see Edna for several days afterwards, though I dined at home every evening and did not go out after dinner. I was debating how to make overtures toward a reconciliation when she came into my study. She had an air of coldness and constraint—the air of the woman who is inflicting severe punishment upon an offending husband by withholding herself from him. She said:
“Mrs. Robert Armitage has asked me to dine on Thursday evening.”
I replied hesitatingly: “Thursday— I’ve an engagement for Thursday—a dinner.”
In her agitation she did not note that I had not finished. Dropping her coldness, she flashed out fiercely:
“We’ve simply got to accept! It’s our chance. We may not have it again. It’s what I’ve been waiting for ever since we moved to this house. And I can’t go alone. Oh, how selfish you are! You never think of anything but your own comfort. And you can’t or won’t realize any of the higher things of life for which I’m striving. It is too horrible!”
If any male reader of this story has known a woman who was, up to a certain time, always able to rouse a strong emotion in him—of love or anger, of pleasure or pain—a woman toward whom he could not be lukewarm, and if that reader can recall the day on which he faced that woman in a situation of stress and found himself calm and patient and kind toward her——
I was surprised to find that Edna was not moving me. Her loveliness did not stir a single tiny flame of passion. Her abuse did not excite resentment or dread. “Just a moment, my dear,” said I with the tranquillity of a judge. “I was trying to say that I would break my engagement.”
I saw that she did not believe me but imagined her outburst had terrified and cowed me into submission. How dispassionately I observed and judged!
“Accept, if you wish,” I went on. “I like Armitage. We’ve been friends for years.”