“You mean—” she faltered.
“I think you will understand. I am not speaking of your husband. Whether you have duties to him or not I can’t say; that is for your own mind and heart to determine. But isn’t it true that your health has a graver importance than if you yourself only were concerned?”
“Yes—you have understood me—”
“Isn’t it your duty to remember at every moment that your thoughts, your actions, may affect another life—that by heedlessness, by abandoning yourself to despair, you may be the cause of suffering it was in your power to avert?”
Herself strongly moved, Rhoda had never spoken so impressively, had never given counsel of such earnest significance. She felt her power in quite a new way, without touch of vanity, without posing or any trivial self-consciousness. When she least expected it an opportunity had come for exerting the moral influence on which she prided herself, and which she hoped to make the ennobling element of her life. All the better that the case was one calling for courage, for contempt of vulgar reticences; the combative soul in her became stronger when faced by such conditions. Seeing that her words were not in vain, she came nearer to Monica and spoke yet more kindly.
“Why do you encourage that fear of your life coming to an end?”
“It’s more a hope than a fear—at most times. I can see nothing before me. I don’t wish to live.”
“That’s morbid. It isn’t yourself that speaks, but your trouble. You are young and strong, and in a year’s time very much of this unhappiness will have passed.”
“I have felt it like a certainty—as if it had been foretold to me—ever since I knew—”
“I think it very likely that young wives have often the same dread. It is physical, Monica, and in your case there is so little relief from dark brooding. But again you must think of your responsibility. You will live, because the poor little life will need your care.”