“That wasn’t exactly fair of him.” Alice was a good deal of a Puritan at heart, and not at all lacking in frankness. “He ought not to have done it. I’m not so strong for Donald, goodness knows, but it strikes me as being pretty rough on him, just the same. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, and I told Billy so.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he had tried his best to keep from telling me, all these months. He went away, once, in April, you remember, and stayed nearly a month, to try to forget, but it didn’t do any good. He says he loves me more every day, and at last he had to tell me of it—he couldn’t keep from it any longer.”
“Well, what good has it done? He has sense enough to see that it’s perfectly hopeless, hasn’t he?”
“No, that’s the worst of it.”
Alice sat back in her chair in alarm. “Good heavens, Edith,” she gasped, “you must be losing your mind.”
“Why?”
“It isn’t possible you are thinking of—” She paused and left her sentence incomplete, gazing intently at her sister. “Do you care for him?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do. You know what my life has been here. You know what it is going to be, for years. I suppose you will think me very disloyal and wicked, but, when a woman’s whole existence is made up, year after year, of wishing for all the things that make life worth while, and never, never being able to afford them, her love for her husband seems somehow to become dried up, and unimportant.”