“Because he wants it,” she answered with a look of defiance. She expected nothing else but that Mrs. Bryan would hold with all her other friends, and she wanted to show her, at once, that she did not care.
“And why does he want it?”
“Because he is tired of me—simply that. No one but me can make allowances for him, and I don’t expect it. I know you are shocked and indignant and all that, but you may save yourself the trouble. It is terrible and unfortunate for me, of course, but I can see, if no one else does, that it is not unnatural. He is highly cultivated and intellectual, and I am not a companion for him. It was long before I would acknowledge it, but I have looked it in the face at last. I was never worthy of him—but oh, while he loved me, it didn’t matter in the least that I was so inferior to him! And he did love me—he did! he did!—as much as he can love anybody—as much, I do believe, as he will ever love that beautiful, wicked woman he is going to marry.”
“Going to marry!” exclaimed Mrs. Bryan, almost breathless, but the little creature who stood near by with her cold hands pressed against her burning cheeks, and her excited eyes fixed on the fire, paid no attention to the reflection of astonishment in her voice.
“Yes, going to marry,” she said. “That is why he was so determined to have the divorce. I knew he had begun to weary of me; I knew I had nothing in me to keep the love of a great creature such as he is, but I think he would have stayed with me and let me go on loving him, at least, if he had not seen that widow, who made up her mind to have him the moment she laid eyes on him, and saw how far above other men he was.”
“But you could have prevented it! He couldn’t have got the divorce from you. Didn’t he know that?”
“Of course he knew it,” she answered, in the petulant tone she often used to Mauma. “He’s a man thoroughly informed on every subject. He knew he could never get it, and that the only way was for me to do it. He made a great mistake, though, and gave himself and me six miserable months of suffering.”
“How do you mean?”
“He tried to force me to sue for a divorce,” she said; “and used every means that he could think of. My friends were wildly excited, and demanded that I should get the divorce, but they might as well have talked into the air. I had but one answer: ‘I love him—love him—do you understand? And there is nothing love cannot forgive!’”
“Love—yes,” retorted Mrs. Bryan, now no longer able to control her indignation. “Love is all very well—but where is your pride?”