"You cannot serve God and Mammon," murmured Helena. She did not know that she had said it. She sank down into her chair again and forced her numb brain to thought.
"Don't break all his illusions," she heard Ruth saying, miles away. "Be gentle with him if you're fond of him. You know how sensitive he is. Your books, you say, sell better. How do you think he could ever endure that, he who—I tell you—is nothing but a child? It would be agony, a life-time agony; disgrace. He lives upon success, on admiration, on being the centre even of a little house. How could a man like that endure to be just Helena Brett's husband? ... Oh no, you won't do it, you can't be so brutal. No one can forbid you your career, but go away and work it out alone. I will look after Hubert, if he needs me."
That struck home, among these words that came dully to Helena through the chaos of her thought. "So that's it," she said with a bitter laugh, longing to hurt somehow. "You're thinking of yourself."
"God knows," said Ruth solemnly, "I wouldn't come back willingly for half the world, fond as I am of Hugh. I've lived since I got right away alone beside the sea. He always trampled on me; I lay down; I haven't got your courage. I often cried myself to sleep—and he not even guessing he had been unkind! It was hideous, I see now; hideous every day of it. But I'd go through it all again, and worse, sooner than expose him to this agony."
There was conviction in her tones. Helena tried to arouse herself. "Leave him?" she said dully. "Surely there's some other way? Even if he didn't mind, think of—— You talk about agony, but how can you advise me to do this, when you know how his friends——"
"Nothing would hurt him," said Ruth earnestly, "nothing in all the world—that is the awful part—so much as this blow to his pride, this shattering of all his life-work. He thinks—he told me so—he thinks this book of yours was just a fluke, an amateur attempt; that you can never do another. Oh, don't you see?" (she cried impatiently): "Must I put it in words? He thinks that he is a real author, you just nobody; that he has studied, he has nerves and everything an artist has, but you are just a woman. He lives upon his self-conceit.... Oh yes, I've said it now; I had to. It's not disloyalty. I'm fond of Hubert too—everybody is, because he is so thorough in it, such a perfect child. And everybody spares him too. Men of his sort are never told; everybody pities them the shock. They smile on him and like to see him so contented. They call him 'dear old Hubert.' It's half pity, yes—but also it's half love. I've seen it all so clearly since I got away. I've sometimes told myself that if I had those years again, I should let him have the whole truth; but I know that I shouldn't. And you won't either, Helena. Nobody ever does. They dream on happily, and all we others seem the selfish ones to them. It's all a comedy, when you're not near enough to see the tragedy. I've thought a lot about it, and I'm so glad now I was gentle. And you'll be gentle too, I know. You'll either go away or you won't write: it's not for me to settle which; but you'll be gentle. You said just now you hadn't got a child. You have. No married woman is without a child. You won't be hard, I know, will you, because your child has been a little spoilt and things have suddenly gone wrong, and—just for a little bit—he loves to hurt his toys?"
"I—I never thought of it like that," said Helena, an odd look in her eyes. "I thought him so splendid and clever, so terribly above me. It all seemed so hopeless."
For answer Ruth went across and kissed this girl who made her feel so old. "I wish we had known each other sooner," she said. "I must go and unpack."
But outside in the hall she stood for a few moments, dabbing at her eyes with a quite fashionably small handkerchief.