“I don’t know what you mean ‘not altogether a murder.’ Murder is murder, you can’t get away from that.” Julian’s tone was low and dull. “Joel, I can’t bear it.”
“I should have thought being in a glass house you wouldn’t throw stones,” bitterness had crept into her voice.
“Mine was self-defense—in a way it was.”
“And mine was an affair of honor—in a way it was. I am going to tell you the whole story. It’s our only hope, Julian—for us both to tell everything.
“Jerry and I had been in love, really and terribly in love, for several years. It was after we knew Junior was on his way that we married. Oh, not because we had to. It was Jerry’s idea that we’d call that our own private marriage, if we found that we could have one, and then accept the necessary legalities for its sake. You see what I mean. I thought it a sort of romantic super-modernism, a beautiful way of counting out the world. Don’t laugh at me, Julian; for the laugh was on me. The first shock came when we knew. He said, ‘I wonder whether we really need to go through the outward form!’ Puzzled, but no more, I said, ‘Of course, don’t you think so?’ and his answer was, ‘Just as you say, of course.’ ‘As you say,’ note that. It took me months of increasing pain to realize that it wasn’t romance for him, but a way of keeping free himself while achieving a son.
“Well, I thought it all out; and it seemed to me I had been deceived as surely as any girl in melodrama. After all it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, the old Tess of the D’Urberville way and the modern, talking-it-all-out way, isn’t it? Instead of the enraged father and brother going on the warpath (fathers and brothers have been made to feel gun-shy these days) the woman herself, whose boast is that she can take care of herself, should have more than the theoretical right to do it. She should be able to fight it out to the death. Call it a new form of dueling if you like. So I went to work to clear my honor. That’s what it amounted to. I had ceased to care, to love him, of course, or I suppose I couldn’t have done it. I took shooting lessons at the 79th St. Armory. He had been a good shot since the War. Then I challenged him, coolly and seriously. I meant it. I named the hour, and the spot (in Central Park), and said he could name the day.”
“Joel, what did he say!”
“He laughed. I suppose I should have known he would. But I was made blind angry by it. So I went for a gun and—ended it all.”
“How did you get away with it?”
“I didn’t intend to. But I had taken his pistol from the drawer—and that, with the position in which he lay, pointed to suicide. It was never finger printed. Our friends claimed we were the most devoted couple they knew. I went to Uncle Bertrand immediately (he was Judge in our Precinct at the time), but he persuaded me, wrongly I know now, to keep silent; he said Jerry had it coming to him. But I wish I’d just run away from him instead.” Joel was crying with eyes wide open.