“Exult? I’m sure I was the proudest woman in the parish the day I married you.” It was true. “But afterwards, afterwards!”
“Oh,” she cried, “are you throwing it in my teeth that I didn’t have a baby? Was that my fault?”
“No, no. But it might have saved us, all the same, and when the baby did not come we made no effort to save ourselves. There’s a light somewhere in every one of us and you and I have quenched our lights. They may be small, they may not be a great light like your father’s, or... or the light which I have seen in the country, they may be nothing but a feeble glow, and we can only give our best. You and I have not given ours. We have not tried to find our light, but now—now that we have discovered what has been wrong with us all this while—we can try, and together. We can all of us give something to the world, not children in our case, but the something else which we were made to give. We don’t know what it is that you can give and I can give, and we’ve left it late to begin to find out, but it is not too late, is it, Ada? Ada,” he pleaded, “it is not too late?”
She looked at the clock. “If you want to wash your hands before dinner you’d better do it now,” she said, “or you will be late.” She rose, but before she left him, she had a moment of illumination. She thought she saw what he was driving at, that he must have seen some happy family while he was away and came back with the cry of the child less man on his lips. “I suppose this means,” she said, “that you want me to adopt a child. That’s what you mean by giving. Well, I won’t do it, Sam. I’ve something else to do with my time than to look after another woman’s brat.”
“What have you to do?” he asked. “What is it that you want to do?”
“To eat my dinner,” she said. She had a healthy appetite. Perhaps that was why she wanted nothing else.
He stood by the door when she had gone, and his hand strayed to his pocket as though it sought a talisman. He felt the letter crinkle, then tore his hand away. Ada was work for a man. There wasn’t room for Ada and for politics. “Deeply regret private reasons compel total withdrawal from politics.” Yes, that was the wording of the telegram which he would send: it was best to be thorough, and, plainly, the man who had Ada in hand had no time to spare on a hobby or an ambition or whatever it was that politics represented for him. He had other work to do in the world.
He stamped upon the ruins of a hope which came to birth ten years ago, and which he had carried with him in his heart of hearts and, as the letter in his pocket proved, not a fool’s hope either. Yes, he had loved that hope which was born on his honeymoon.
It occurred to him that in all he had said, or tried to say, to Ada he had not mentioned love. It had not seemed the right word for use in a conversation with Ada, but, he reflected savagely, he had loved his hope of politics from the time of the honeymoon onwards: and from that time he had not loved Ada.
Was that true? Had he neglected the substance for the shadow, used love upon his hope and not upon his wife? If he had his talk with her again, could he honestly begin it in another way? Could he begin with love? He knew that he could not, and squared his shoulders to the fact. It was a case, then, for the more courage. What was it Effie had said? “There are no limits to bravery.” He wondered, but he meant to see.