MARADICK, JANET, AND MISS MINNS HAVE A RIDE
AFTER THE WEDDING
But Mrs. Lester had not the courage of her convictions. Those convictions were based very largely on an audacious standing up against Providence, although she herself would never have seen it in that light. In each of her “affairs” she went breathlessly forward, as it were on tiptoe, with eyes staring and heart beating; wondering what would be the dangers, gasping at possibly startling adventures.
But the real thing had never met her before. The two or three men who had been concerned in her other experiences had understood quite as well as she did that it was only a game, pour passer le temps, and a very pleasant way of passing it too. But this man was taking it very differently. It was no game at all to him; he did not look as though he could play a game if he wanted to. But it was not Maradick who frightened her; it was herself. She had never gone so far as this before, and now as she undressed she was suddenly terribly frightened.
Her face seemed white and ghostly in the mirror, and in a sudden panic, she turned on all the lights. Then the blaze frightened her and she turned them all out again, all save the one over the mirror.
She sat gazing into it, and all the dark corners of the room seemed to gather round her like living things; only her white face stared out of the glass. If Fred hadn’t been so horribly humdrum, if she hadn’t known so thoroughly every inch of him, every little trick that he had, every kind of point of view that he ever had about anything, then this never would have happened. Because, really, he had been a very good husband to her, and she was really fond of him; when one came to think of it, he had been much better than a good many husbands she had known. She leaned back in her chair and looked at herself.
It had once been more than mere fondness, it had been quite exciting; she smiled, reminiscences crowded about her . . . dear old Fred!
But she pulled herself up with a jerk. That, after all, wasn’t the point; the point, the thing that mattered, was Thursday night. Out there in the garden, when he had held her like that, a great lawlessness had come upon her. It was almost as though some new spirit had entered into her and was showing her things, was teaching her emotions that she had never been shown or learnt before. And, at that moment, it had seemed to her the one thing worth having.
She had never lived before. Life was to be counted by moments, those few golden moments that the good gods gave to one, and if one didn’t take them, then and there, when they were offered, why then, one had never lived at all, one might as well never have been born.
But now, as she sat there alone in her room, she was realising another thing—that those moments had their consequences. What were they going to do afterwards? What would Maradick do? What, above all, would her own attitude to Fred be? She began, very slowly, to realise the truth, that the great laws are above creeds and all dogmas because they are made from man’s necessities, not from his superstitions. What was she going to do?