“Well, that is the next thing to it.”
“No disrespect to the army, I beg, madam. It is very hard work to get in at all nowadays. No Braithwaite ever had to study so much before as I shall have to do to pass the exams. I’m sure to be ‘plucked’ the first time, of course, and very likely the second. I must get through the third time, you know, or else it will be all up with me.”
“You must get through the first time,” said Annie indignantly. “If you don’t, I will never speak to you again.”
“Oh, yes, you will. If I don’t pass, you will have to console me, and, if I do pass, you will congratulate me. Oh, Annie, I wish I had been old enough to marry you, or that you had married George, so that you might come back to the Elms again.” No suggestion that she should go back to Harry, however. Annie looked up at him quickly.
“How is Harry? He is not anxious for my return, I suppose?”
“Oh, to think of your being his wife is intolerable! He is not worthy to look at you. Sometimes he is sorry, in a maudlin sort of way, that he can’t see you, and complains that you have deserted him, and that you are the only woman he ever cared about. But that is all nonsense, and he says it only when he is drunk. He drinks worse than Wilfred. And a few months ago——Well, never mind that! You mustn’t trouble your head any more about him.”
Annie listened in silence, her heart aching with remorse. She knew well enough now that she had done irretrievable wrong in leaving her husband, whom at least she could, at the entire sacrifice of herself, have kept from this. But it was too late now, she told herself. If she returned to him now unbidden, with the feeling of repulsion toward him a thousand-fold stronger than ever, she could not expect a welcome, she could not even repress the disgust she felt.
She told William that she was going to leave town and travel with a theatrical company, to gain experience in better parts than she could hope to play in London yet. He walked all the way home with her, and, looking at her gravely as he stood saying the last words to her, he complained that she was thin and pale.
“Do you know, Annie, you are so much altered I should hardly have known you. You have lost all your pretty color, and your eyes are not half so bright as they used to be. It is all that beast Harry, making you have to work for your living!” he broke out, passionately. “He deserves to be kicked!”
“Come, be reasonable, William; that is not Harry’s fault. Women must expect to ‘go off’ in looks, you know, as they grow older.”