Margaret nodded. “Of course.” Suffering outside of herself made no difference to her. Her throbbing wound was the only reality.
“Janet is going to lend us her house.” A new note had come into Dorothy’s voice. “I haven’t seen her since last spring. She had on a new hat, and was looking awfully well. You know Herbert has come back.”
Margaret started. At last her wandering attention was fixed on her visitor. “Herbert? And she let him?” There was deep disgust in her tone.
Dorothy paused to inhale placidly before she answered. “Well, what else could she do? He tried to make her get a divorce, and she wouldn’t.”
A flush stained Margaret’s delicate features. “I never understood why she didn’t. He made no secret of what he wanted. He showed her plainly that he loved the other woman.”
Dorothy’s only reply was a shrug; but after a moment, in which she smoked with a luxurious air, she commented briefly, “But man’s love isn’t one of the eternal verities.”
“Well, indifference is, and he proved that he was indifferent to Janet. Yet she has let him come back to her. I can’t see what she is to get out of it.”
Dorothy laughed cynically. “Oh, she enjoys immensely the attitude of forgiveness, and at last he has permitted her to forgive him. There is a spiritual vanity as well as a physical one, you know, and Janet’s weakness is spiritual.”
“But to live with a man who doesn’t love her? To remember every minute of the day and night that it is another woman he loves?”
“And every time that she remembers it she has the luxury of forgiving again.” Keenness flickered like a blade in Dorothy’s gray eyes. “You are very lovely, Margaret,” she said abruptly. “The years seem only to leave you rarer and finer, but you know nothing about life.”