His Second Wife

by Ernest Poole

"It's going to be all right, my dear! In a minute you're going to laugh or cry! Laugh! It's better! Laugh! . . . That's right!"

Joe had his small car waiting outside; and waving good-bye to Emily, who was taking Susette to the park, they sped away to the river and off into the country. Soon they were talking excitedly.

It was after dark when they returned, and as had been already planned they went to a café to dine, a gay place crowded full of people, music throbbing, voices humming. Ethel wanted it like that. She wanted to be lifted through. Joe alarmed her now. "Oh, don't—don't be so considerate!" she wanted to exclaim to him. "What good does it do?" As they smiled at each other, again and again she had to fight down an impulse to cry—or shiver. She would bite her lips and turn away and watch people, then turn quickly back and start talking rapidly.

At home, alone in Amy's room, she sat at the dressing table there, her movements swift and feverish. She had often looked at herself of late in her mirror in the nursery, but now she did not look into the glass. Her hands were cold. In a very few minutes she called to Joe.

And a little later, on her old bed by the cradle in the nursery, she lay violently trembling and staring intently up at the ceiling.

"What has happened?" she asked. "Whose fault was it? Mine?" With a strange thrill of fear and repulsion, she clenched her teeth and held herself until the fit of trembling passed. "Is this real, Ethel Knight? Do you mean to say this is what love is—just this, just this?" She shook her head and bit her lips. She asked, "Am I tied to this man for life? I am not! I can't be! This isn't real—it isn't me!"

The night was a blur, like a bad dream. Once she remembered jumping up and quickly locking the nursery door. But that was the beginning of a return to her senses. "I needn't have done that," she thought. "It wasn't fair. It was even rather insulting." This thought made her quieter. And later, as the night wore on, a feeling of having been unjust and foolish little by little emerged from the chaos and began to steady her. But again the old dismay and dread and loathing would come back with a rush. All at once her body from head to foot would grow cold and rigid. And the power which a year ago with her sister she had excitedly sensed as the driving force of this whole town, now loomed brutal, savage! The thought rose suddenly in her mind, "Amy. She was his wife! Five years!" And then in a revealing flash, "Her love was like that! She taught him!"

With a bound that feeling of intimacy with her sister leaped to a climax—burned!

It was long till she could quiet herself. She had to do it by walking the floor. . . . Thank heaven for the daylight and the small, round face of Susette peering over the edge of the crib. Soon she had the child in her bed and they were looking at pictures.

Later she went back to her husband. It cost her no slight effort of will, and it was a relief to find him gone. On her dresser he had left a note: