IV
Frankie resolved to forget Lionel. She tried her best.
“I made a mistake,” she said to herself. “Very well! It’s over and done with now. I’m not going to be a sentimental idiot. It’s over!”
It wasn’t, though. Her loneliness was bitter, her wound profound; she had nothing to sustain her but her own self-righteousness—cold comfort in that. It was all very well to tell herself Lionel was no good; whether he was or not, she wanted him back. Worst of all was her worry about him. She was convinced that without her he was lost, was helpless—what all women think about their men. She had the loftiest views about women anyway, and their influence. They were ordained the spiritual monitors of men, as well as the natural guardians of their healths and pocketbooks. Woman was the practical one, the conserver, the frequenter of savings banks; she was also the beauty and the charm of life. What remained was Man.
Frances had planned a future for them with care; and little by little she fancied she was improving the man himself, making him more responsible, more sedate, more what a woman demands of a husband. She was too intelligent to understand him. She couldn’t manage him and comprehend him as an ignorant, emotional woman would have done. With every new idea, every book read, she had retreated from the position that was her birthright.
She thought over Lionel with a passionate desire to do right; tried to obtain guidance from her brain while her heart was dumb. She wondered whether it did him more good to see how seriously she regarded his offence, or whether it would have helped him more to forgive him. Never considered it simply as a matter of cruelty or kindness. She was so concerned with thinking of what was morally best for Lionel that she neglected her own soul’s good.
And without doubt her soul suffered. She was becoming irritable, intolerant, over-haughty, wrapped up in her own affairs. She needed Lionel badly, needed his carelessness, his sweet temper. In spite of that, she thought she was “getting over” it splendidly; being sensible, and so on. She was able to eat and to sleep and to live as usual; even looked the same. And then, suddenly, one night, woke up with a piercing pain, a most irresistible tenderness and longing for him.
“How could I have been so heartless!” she asked herself, sitting up in bed, and clasping her hands hysterically. “What did it matter, what he did? What do I care about that? Lionel! Darling! I want you back so!”
She got up then and there and wrote to him, addressing it in care of Horace.