“My—dear! Ough! Tut, tut, tut—think of our going on and living our ordinary life and all the time you are suffering—it’s dreadful to think of.”
“Well, not exactly suffering; I’m not quite an invalid. Dr. Money-Berry advised me to live very carefully during the next few months; he thinks I shall be all right if I leave off starchy foods—they are so bad for the valves of the heart and—and I don’t want to leave you, Alfred,” she said in a pathetic little voice.
“Good heavens! Go away and leave me! What are you talking of, Queenie? If you were to go away and leave me—for another man—I should blow my brains out,” and here he began to walk about the room. “And if I didn’t, I should go to the devil.”
I am ashamed to record that there arose in Regina’s mind a picture of Alfred, her noble Alfred! going headlong to the devil with a hussy of plump proportions.
Alfred continued excitedly, “And if you were to leave me in the other sense—I don’t know what I should do.”
“Dear Alfred, you would probably marry again,” she observed quietly.
“Never—never! Put that thought out of your mind once and for all. I should live out the rest of my life as best I could—but I really can’t talk about it. You were perfectly right to go to a specialist, and you must follow out his treatment to the very letter. Now, promise me you will do everything he tells you, take all the medicine he gives you, and live by line and rule until he tells you that you are really out of danger.”
The heart of Regina was sick within her. She knew she was deceiving Alfred; she felt herself to be the basest and blackest and most ungrateful woman that had ever been born into the world, and yet, she told herself, her deception was a harmless one, that if she was sinning against him, she was sinning to a good end. And so Regina entered upon her course of penal servitude, for I can call it nothing more or less. The same explanation which was given to Alfred was given to Julia, and henceforth Regina, although she ate at the same table, ate alone. She did not in any way attempt to curtail the meals of her husband and child, but supplied the table in exactly the usual manner.
“Why do you buy salmon when you can’t touch it yourself?” Alfred asked over and over again.