They were nearly at the barrier, and he said:
“Oh sentimentality, sentimentality! I had to do what seemed best for, us all—that was what I wanted. Now I’m taking what I get for it.”
And he relapsed into a silence that lasted until they were nearly at home. And seated beside him in her coupé, Ellida, with the little deep wisdom of the woman of the household, sat beside him in a mood of wonder, of tenderness, and of commiseration.
“And it’s always like this,” she seemed to feel in her wise, small bones. “There they are, these men of ours. We see them altogether affable, smiling, gentle, composed. And we women have to make believe to their faces and to each other that they’re towers of strength and all-wise, as they like to make out that they are. We see them taking action that they think is strong; and forcible, and masculine, and that we know is utterly mad; and we have to pretend to them and to each other that we agree in placid confidence; and then we go home, each one of us with our husbands or our brothers, and the strong masculine creature breaks down, groans and drags us after him hither and thither in his crisis, when he has to pay for his folly. And that’s life. And that’s love. And that’s the woman’s part. And that’s all there is to it.”
It is not to be imagined that Ellida did anything so unsubtle as to put these feelings of hers, even to herself, into words. They found vent only in the way her eyes, compassionate and maternal, rested on his brooding face. Indeed, the only words she uttered, either to herself or to him, were, with deep concern—he had taken off his hat to ease the pressure of the blood in his brows—as she ran her fingers gently through his hair:
“Poor old Toto!”
He remained lost in his abstraction, until they were almost at her door. Then he squared his shoulders and resumed his hat.
“Yet I’m sure I was right,” he said. “Just consider what it was up to me to do. You’ve got to think that I don’t by any means care for Katya less. I want her for myself. But I want to see to it that Pauline has a good time, and I want to see her having it.”
“How can she have it if you’ve given her Dudley Leicester when she wants you?”
“My dear child,” he answered, and he had become again calm, strong, and infinitely lofty. “Don’t you understand that’s how Society has to go on? It’s the sort of thing that’s got to happen to make us the civilized people that we are. Dudley’s the best fellow in the world: I’m sure he’s the best fellow in the world. I know everything he’s ever done and every thought he’s ever thought for the last twenty years, and everything that Pauline wants to do in this world he’ll do. She’ll make a man of him. She’ll give him a career. He’ll be her life’s work. And if you can’t have what you want, the next best thing is to have a life’s work that’s worth doing, that’s engrossing, that keeps you from thinking about what you haven’t got.”