Blair was indeed unhappy. His god was tormenting him by contrasting Elizabeth's generosity with his selfishness. It was then that he saw, terror-stricken, his opportunity. He tried not to see it. He denied it, he struggled against it; yet all the while he was drawn by an agonized curiosity to consider it. Finally, with averted eyes, he held out shrinking hands to chance, to see if opportunity would fall into them. This was some six months after she had come back to him; six months on her part of clinging to Mrs. Richie's strength; of wondering if David, working hard in Philadelphia, was beginning to be happier; of wondering if Blair was really any happier for her weariness of soul. Six months on Blair's part, of futile moments of hope because Elizabeth seemed a little kinder;—"perhaps she's beginning to care!" he would say to himself; six months of agonizing jealousy when he knew she did not care; of persistent, useless endeavors to touch her heart; of endless small, pathetic sacrifices; of endless small, pathetic angers and repentances. "Blair," she used to say, with wonderful patience, after one of these glimmerings of hope had arisen in him because of some careless amiability on her part, "I am sorry to be unkind; I wish you would get over caring about me, but all I can do ever is just to be friends. No, I don't hate you. Why should I hate you? You didn't wrong me any more than I wronged you. We are just the same; two bad people. But I'm trying to be good, truly I am; and—and I'm sorry for you, Blair, dear. That's all I can say."
It was after one of those miserable discussions between the husband and wife that Blair had gone out of the hotel with violent words of despair. He never knew just where he spent that day—certainly not in the office at the Works; but wherever it was, it brought him face to face with his opportunity. Should he accept it? Should he refuse it? He said to himself that he could not decide. Perhaps he was right; he had shirked decisions all his life; perhaps so great a decision was impossible for him. At any rate, he thought it was. Something must decide for him. What should it be? All that afternoon he tried to make a small decision which should settle the great decision. Of course, he might pitch up a penny? no, the swiftness of such judgment seemed beyond endurance; he might say: "if it rains before noon, I'll let her go;" then he could watch the skies, and meet the decision gradually; no; it rained so often in March! If when he got back to the hotel he found her wearing this piece of jewelry or that; if the grimy pigeon, teetering up and down on the granite coping across the street, flew away before he reached the next crossing. . . . On and on his mind went, jibing away, terrified, from each suggestion; then returning to it again. It was dusk when he came back to the hotel. David's mother was sitting with Elizabeth, and they were talking, idly, of Nannie's new house, or Cherry-pie's bad cold, or anything but the one thing that was always on their minds, when, abruptly, Blair entered. He flung open the door with a bang,—then stood stock-still on the threshold. He was very pale, but the room was so shadowy that his pallor was not noticed.
"Why are you sitting here in the dark!" he cried out, violently. "Why don't you light the gas? Good God!" he said, almost with a sob. Elizabeth looked at him in astonishment; before she could reply that she and Mrs. Richie liked the dusk and the firelight, he saw that she was not alone, and burst into a loud laugh: "Mrs. Richie here? How appropriate!" He came forward into the circle of flickering light, but he seemed to walk unsteadily and his face was ghastly. Helena Richie gave him a startled look. Blair's gentleness had never failed David's mother before; she thought, with consternation, that he had been drinking. Perhaps her gravity checked his reckless mood, for he said more gently: "I beg your pardon; I didn't see you, Mrs. Richie. I was startled because everything was dark. Outer darkness! Please don't go,—it's so appropriate for you to be here!" he ended. Again his voice was sardonic. Mrs. Richie said, coldly, that she had been just about to return to her own room. As she left them, she said to herself, anxiously, that she was afraid there was something the matter. She would have been sure of it had she stayed in the twilight with the husband and wife.
"I'll light the gas," Elizabeth said, rising. But he caught her wrist. "No! No! there's no use lighting up now." As he spoke he pulled her down on his knee. "Elizabeth, is there no hope?" he said; "none? none?" She was silent. He leaned his forehead on her shoulder for a moment, and she heard that dreadful sound—a man's weeping. Then suddenly, roughly, he flung his arms about her, and kissed her violently—her lips, her eyes, her neck; the next moment he pushed her from his knee. "Why, why did you sit here in the dark to-night? I never knew you to sit in the dark!" He got on his feet, leaving her, standing amazed and offended, her hair ruffled, the lace about her throat in disorder; at the window, his back turned to her, he flung over his shoulder: "Look here—you can go. I won't hold you any longer. I suppose your uncle can fix it up; some damned legal quibble will get you out of it. I—I'll do my part."
Before she could ask him what he meant he went out. He had accepted his opportunity!
But it was not until the next day that she really understood.
"He says," Mrs. Richie told Robert Ferguson, "that he will take Nannie and go abroad definitely; she can call it desertion. Yes; on Nannie's money of course; how else could he go? Oh, my poor Blair!"
"'Poor Blair'? He deserves all he gets," Elizabeth's uncle said, after his first astonishment. Then, in spite of himself, he was sorry for Blair. "I suppose he's hard hit," he said, grudgingly, "but as for 'poor Blair,' I don't believe it goes very deep with him. You say he was out of temper because she had not lighted up, and told her she could go? Rather a casual way of getting rid of a wife."
"Robert, how can you be so unjust?" she reproached him. "Oh, perhaps he will be a man yet! How proud his mother would be."
"My dear Helena, one swallow doesn't make a summer." Then, a little ashamed of his harshness, he added, "No, he'll never be very much of a person; but he's his mother's son, so he can't be all bad; he'll just wander round Europe, with Nannie tagging on behind, enjoying himself more or less harmlessly."