"Of course I care for him; how could anyone help it? But he won't let me—he won't let me!" She was on the verge of hysteria, and her loss of self-control was aggravated by the feeling that she was making a weak, silly exhibition of herself.
"If you do care for Dory, and Dory cares for you, and you don't care for
Ross—" began Madelene.
"But I do care for Ross, too! Oh, I must be bad—bad! Could a nice woman care for two men at the same time?"
"I'd have said not," was Madelene's answer. "But now I see that she could—and I see why."
"Dory means something to me that Ross does not. Ross means something that Dory does not. I want it all—all that both of them represent. I can't give up Dory; I can't give up Ross. You don't understand, Madelene, because you've had the good luck to get it all from Arthur."
After a silence, Madelene said: "Well, Del, what are you going to do?"
"Nothing."
"That's sensible!" approved Madelene. "If Ross really loves you, then, whether he can have you or not, he'll free himself from Theresa. He simply couldn't go on with her. And if you really care for him, then, when Dory comes home he'll free you."
"That ought to be so," said Adelaide, not seeing the full meaning of Madelene's last words. "But it isn't. Neither Ross nor I is strong enough. We're just ordinary people, the sort that most everybody is and that most everybody despises when they see them or read about them as they really are. No, he and I will each do the conventional thing. We'll go our separate ways "—contemptuously—"the easiest ways. And we'll regard ourselves as martyrs to duty—that's how they put it in the novels, isn't it?"
"At least," said Madelene, with a calmness she was far from feeling, "both you and Ross have had your lesson in the consequence of doing things in a hurry."