"I don't know. I told him how I'd made up my mind to stick by the ship, so that there wouldn't be any scandal, or anything to break up his home, or hurt the children, and how I was going to be better about money, and he said, 'Very well, Lucy, we'll try it for a while, but I don't think compromises are much good.' He wants me to do all I'm trying to do, and be his wife too. I thought he'd—Oh, I thought he'd be pleased and grateful—instead of that he tries to be cold to me, and is very sharp and stern."
"It takes time to settle down to any new modus vivendi."
"Well," she cried, "I'm not doing it because I want to, am I? I'm only doing it for his sake. I'm doing every blessed thing I can to save the situation; and if there are things I simply can't do—why he ought to be generous and understand. Oh, I know it isn't going to work! And all the time when he isn't being cold and stern, he—he's trying to make me love him again, and come back to him. And right in the middle of that he'll fly into a rage, and say that I ought to be compelled to behave like a rational human being."
"But he wouldn't compel you to do anything you didn't want to do, Lucy. Trust him for that."
"I don't know. He's so different from the way he used to be. Sometimes I'm afraid. Sometimes I am afraid to be alone in the same house with him. If I didn't have you to back me up, and give me strength I'd—but it can't last long. I know it can't. And I don't know that it's worth trying."
"You are still fond of him, Lucy?"
"And sorry for him, Oh, so sorry. But fondness and sorrow aren't everything."
"It will be better when he has the new contract to occupy him, and keep him away. It won't be an all-day affair then. And all the time you and I'll be meeting to talk things over, and borrow strength to go on with. It isn't easy for me either, dear. And of course, if after trial we find it won't work, why then it will be our duty to ourselves to cut the Gordian knot."
She turned toward me and we looked into each other's eyes for a long time.
"I've given him all I can," she said. "It isn't enough. It never will be enough. Oh, if there are knots to be cut, let's cut 'em and have done with it."