"Cleo."
It made him furious, this subtle appeal to his keen sense of fatherhood. She knew how tenderly he loved his boy. She knew that while such obligations rest lightly on some men, the tie that bound him to his son was the biggest thing in his life. She had been near him long enough to learn the secret things of his inner life. She was using them now to break down the barriers of character and self-respect. He could see it plainly. He hated her for it and yet the appeal went straight to his heart.
Two things in this letter he couldn't get away from:
"You see, I didn't know how much I had gone through."
He kept reading this over. And the next line:
"Please don't be angry with me for what neither you nor I can help now."
The appeal was so human, so simple, so obviously sincere, no man with a soul could ignore it. How could she help it now? She too had been swept into the tragic situation by the blind forces of Nature. After all, had it not been inevitable? Did not such a position of daily intimate physical contact—morning, noon and night—mean just this? Could she have helped it? Were they not both the victims, in a sense, of the follies of centuries? Had he the right to be angry with her?
His reason answered, no. And again came the deeper question—can any man ever escape the consequences of his deeds? Deeds are of the infinite and eternal and the smallest one disturbs the universe. It slowly began to dawn on him that nothing he could ever do or say could change one elemental fact. She was a mother—a fact bigger than all the forms and ceremonies of the ages. It was just this thing in his history that made his sin against the wife so poignant, both to her and to his imagination. A child was a child, and he had no right to sneak and play a coward in such an hour.
Step by step the woman's simple cry forced its way into the soul and slowly but surely the rags were stripped from pride, until he began to see himself naked and without sham.
The one thing that finally cut deepest was the single sentence: "You see, I didn't know how much I had gone through——"