“Christine,” he said quietly, though his heart was leaping, “it is something about your—about the man you married.”
A faint flush came up in her face, and she averted her eyes an instant. Then she looked at him and said calmly:
“I thought you knew that long ago that became one of the subjects upon which I had ceased to feel deeply. If you think it is wrong of me to say this I cannot help it. He hated his little child. He never thought it anything but a trouble and a burden, and he was not sorry when it died. He is glad the trouble of it is over. He had long ceased to feel any love for me—if he ever had it—but if he had cared a little for the poor little baby I could have forgotten that; but he was cruel toward it in thought and feeling, and if I had not watched the treasure of my heart and guarded it unceasingly he would have been cruel to it in deed, too. I know it and Eliza knows it. Oh, why did you make me speak of it? I ought not to say such things. It is wrong.”
“Why wrong, Christine? Why do you feel it to be wrong? Tell me.”
“Because he is my husband,” she said sternly, “and I took solemn vows to love, to serve and to obey him. I said ‘for better or for worse.’ I said ‘till death us do part.’ The God who will judge me knows whether I have kept them. The love one cannot control; but one can force one’s self to serve and obey, and that I have tried to do.”
“And you have done it. I have felt that I could kneel and worship you for it—but, Christine, the truth is too evident to be avoided. He is unworthy of you. Suppose you could be free from him?”
“Divorce?” she said with a sort of horror. “Never! I scarcely know what it is—but marriage seems to me a thing indissoluble and inviolate. I cannot forget that he is the father of my child. I could never wish, on that account, to be free from him.”
“Christine, there is another way. Oh, my poor, poor child, you have never even thought of it, and it breaks my heart to tell you. But there is a way you might be free from him without divorce—a sad and dreadful way, my poor little sister, but remember, I implore you, that there is light beyond the darkness. Oh, cannot you think what I mean?”
She shook her head.