Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,—set in motion by those magic words,—when she lay at rest in the afternoons, with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never perceive from imagination, but only from experience—who cannot even adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not personally lived through. No advice touches them, for the words that embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same circumstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom look back—the present, that is always climbing on into the future, occupies them exclusively.
Lois with “The Woman’s Kingdom” in her hand, felt that some source of power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish thoughts came with the words—historic names of women whom men had loved devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they themselves had grown old, women who had never lost their charm. There were those women of the French salons, who could interest even other generations; Queens indeed! She couldn’t really interest one man! She thought over the married couples of her acquaintance, in search of those who should reveal some secret, some guiding light. One woman across the street had no other object in life than purveying to the household comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to expect nothing from him in return; if William liked his fish, she was repaid. A couple farther down appeared to be held together by the fact of marriage, nothing more; they were bored to death by each other’s society. Another couple were happily absorbed in their children, to whom they were both sacrificially subordinate. With none of these conditions could Lois be satisfied. Then, there were the women who always spoke as if a man were an animal and a woman were not a woman, but a spirit; but Lois was very much a woman! She settled at last, after penetrative thought, on one husband and wife, the latter a plain little person no longer young. Every man liked to go to her charming, comfortable house; every man admired her; and that her husband, a very handsome man himself, admired her most of all was unobtrusively evident. Every look, every gesture, betrayed the charming, vivifying unity between those two. How was it accomplished?
How could one interest a man like that? There was Eugene Larue—she could interest him! The thought of him always gave her a sense of conscious power; he paid her homage. She did not know what his relations were with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she felt her woman’s kingdom. If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to know—get his guidance—But Lois was before all things inviolably a wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterwards, conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene Larue would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be loved that way. Lois took deep, thoughtful counsel of her heart. If they two, she and Eugene, had met while both were free? The answer was what she had known it would be, else she had not dared to make the test—the man who was her husband was the only man who could ever have been her husband. Justin!
With “The Woman’s Kingdom” in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking well—that was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was not looking well! But she would make him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of hers; she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be able to think of nothing, of no one, but her—he had not always thought of her! No, no—she would not remember that, she would not pity herself. She would learn to laugh, even if it took heroic effort—men liked you to laugh, she had always taken everything too seriously. The vision of his sleeping, dead face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as Dosia said, he didn’t look well. Oh, when he came home to-night——!
She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply blue. The children exclaimed over their “pretty mamma”; she looked younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. The latter could not help saying:
“How lovely you are, Lois! And you’re all dressed up, too; do you expect anyone?”
“Only Justin,” said Lois.
“Only Justin”! The words brought an exquisite joy with them—only Justin, the one man in all the world for her. There was but a half-hour now until dinner-time. It had passed, and he had not come; but he was often late—Still he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The two women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby woke up afterwards, an unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop; Lois, divested of her rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an interval of quiet she went up again, to find Lois at last lying down.
“It’s eleven o’clock, Lois; I think I’ll go to bed. Shall I leave the gas burning down-stairs?”
“Yes, please do; he can’t get anything now but the last train out.”