“Well, now, let’s leave her and look at Dominick’s side. He marries her honorably and lives with her for nearly three years. Every semblance of affection that he had for her gets rubbed off in those three years, every illusion goes. He’s tied to a woman that he can’t stand. He went up to Antelope that time because they’d had some sort of a scrap and he felt he couldn’t breathe in the same house with her. He told me himself that they’d not lived as man and wife for nearly a year. Now, I don’t know what you’re going to say, but I think to keep on living in that state is all wrong. I’ll borrow your expression, I think it’s a sin.”
She answered doggedly:
“It’s awful, but she’s his wife. Oh, if you’d seen her face when she talked to me, her thin, mean, common face, all painted and powdered and so miserable!”
He thought she was wavering, that he saw in this unreasonable, illogical dodging of the point at issue a sign of defeat, and he pushed his advantage.
“And you—a girl of heart and feeling like you—would condemn that man and woman to go on living that lie, that useless, purposeless lie? I can’t understand it. What good comes of it? What’s the necessity for it? Do you realize what a man Dominick might be if he was married to the right woman, and had a decent home where he could live like a Christian? Why, he’d be a different creature. He’d have a future. He’d make his place in the community. All the world would be before him, and he’d mount up to where he belongs. And what is he now? Nothing. All the best in him’s paralyzed by this hell of a box he’s got himself into. The man’s just withering up with despair.”
It was almost too much. For a moment she did not answer, then said in a small voice like a child’s,
“You’re making this very hard for me, papa.”
“My God, Rosey!” he cried, exasperated, “you’re making it hard for yourself. It’s you with your cast-iron prejudices, and your obstinacy, who are making it hard.”
“Well, I’ve got them,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’ve got them, and they’ll stay with me till I die. Nothing’s going to change me in this. I can’t argue and reason about them. They’re part of me.”
She approached the mantelpiece, and, leaning a hand on it, looked down at the fire. The light gilded the front of her dress and played on her face, down-drooped and full of stern decision.