Across the gulf that separated them, Mrs. Callendar laughed and said, “But that would have made no difference. I learned long ago not to be concerned with the morals of my friends. You are what you are and I like you, my dear, whether you had one lover or fifty, except that if you had had fifty I should have known you to be a woman of no taste.” She paused and lighted another cigarette out of the box she had sent her from Constantinople. “I had no idea,” she continued thoughtfully, “how wide the difference was.... Besides, you are a musician ... an artist. One does not require of an artist the morals of the bourgeoisie. One expects such things. It is so because it is so, and there’s an end to it.” She puffed for a time, slowly, lost in thought, and then added in a kind of postscript. “My poor girl! What a lot you have not learned! You will not be free until you do what you see fit ... regardless of any one.”
And now Ellen found herself once more where she had begun. In all their talk they had arrived after all nowhere, because they had been talking all the while of two different things. Mrs. Callendar, conscious perhaps of the hopelessness of the muddle, rose and began to walk slowly up and down the room, an absurd and untragic figure, plump and much laced but energetic and clever. After a time she came and stood by Ellen’s chair.
“I take it then,” she said, “that you do not love your husband.”
“I don’t know,” Ellen replied dully, “I don’t know. It is nothing like this new thing ... nothing at all. I am sorry for him. Perhaps that is it.”
“It is a match then that your parents made?”
“No.... It is not that.... It’s quite different....” She hesitated for a moment and then said in a low voice, “I ran away with him.... I eloped. It was not because I loved him. It was because I had to escape. I wanted to be a musician.... I wanted to be great. Lately I have thought sometimes I was only a fool ... that I have only confused and ruined everything.”
This Mrs. Callendar pondered for a time, returning to her chair and lighting another cigarette before she spoke. “And why do you pity him?” she asked presently.
“It is because he is so good and so humble. I am afraid of hurting him. He has been good to me and generous. It is almost worse than if I had loved him.... Don’t you see?”
“You would not divorce him?” asked Mrs. Callendar.
“No,” Ellen cried suddenly. “No, I could not do that.... I couldn’t....”