Rose sat looking at him, her soul wrung with sympathy. Her instinct was to take the bowed head in her arms and clasp it to her bosom, not as a woman in love, but as a woman torn by pity for a suffering she could not alleviate. She made no movement, however, but kept both hands deep in her pockets, as she said,
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t talk this way to me. I think I’m the one person in the world that you ought to speak to about it.”
“I can’t talk to anybody else, not to any friend, not to my own mother. It’s my affair. No one else had any responsibility in it. I brought it on myself and I’ve got to stand by it myself. But you—you’re different.”
He drew himself up, and, staring out into the great wash of sun and air before him, went on in a louder voice, as if taking a new start.
“I was thinking last night about it, looking it in the face. The dark’s the best time for that, you seem to see things clearer, more truthfully. And I came to the conclusion it would be better if I ended it. I didn’t see that I had any obligation to go on martyrizing myself for ever. I didn’t see that anybody was benefiting by it. I thought we’d be happier and make something better of our lives if we were apart, in different houses, in different towns.”
“Does she want to leave you?”
The question seemed to touch a nerve that startled and then stiffened him. He answered it with his head turned half toward her, the eyebrows lifted, a combative note in his voice:
“I don’t know whether she does or not.” He stopped and then said, with his face flushing, “No, I don’t think she does.”
“How can you leave her then?”
“Well, I can—” he turned on her almost angrily and met her clear eyes. “Oh, I can’t go into particulars,” he said sharply, looking away again. “It’s not a thing for you and me to discuss. Incompatibility is a recognized ground of separation.”