“Why?” asked Emma. “What are you trying to say?”
“Because I don’t mean to live with Naomi ever again. It’s a wicked thing that I’ve done.”
She began to stroke his forehead, continuing for a long time before she spoke. She was having suddenly to face things—things which she had always known, and pretended not to know. At last she said, “Why is it a wicked thing to live with your lawful wife?”
The world began to whiz dizzily about his head. Odd flashes of light passed before his closed eyes. It seemed to him that he must speak the truth, if he were ever to open them again without shame.
“Because she’s not really my wife ... she’s just like any woman, any stranger ... I never loved her at all. I can’t go on ... living like that. Can’t you see how wicked it is?”
Emma was caught in her own web, by the very holy principles she upheld—that it was wrong to marry some one you did not love. It was this same thing which disturbed her peace of mind about Moses Slade.
“You loved her once, Philip, or you wouldn’t have married her.”
“No, I didn’t know anything then, Ma.” The color of pain entered his voice. “Can’t you see, Ma? I wasn’t alive then. I never loved her, and now it’s worse than that.”
The stroking of his forehead suddenly ceased. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Philip.... We’d better not go on now. You’re tired and ill. Everything will be different when you are well again.”
For a second time there came to him a blinding flash of revelation. He saw that she had always been like that: she had always pushed things aside to let them work themselves out. An awful doubt dawned upon him that she was not always right, that sometimes she had made a muddle of everything. A feeling of dizziness swept over him.