“I do,” she said heavily, “I cannot bear this shame in your presence, I should lie down and die under it. Can you think I do this lightly, can you not understand the awfulness of speaking such things aloud?”
“I understand it all, dear, but have you counted the cost, you will be weak and ill, perhaps in danger, can you bear it all? If you finally decide to go alone to your home I will start the same day for Africa. I have been asked to undertake that expedition for the relief of Broad, my old friend, the missionary I told you about. I do not intend to treat this resolve of yours as a freak, Gwen, or to give it the grace of one. You are a strong woman and from your own point of view, sane. Once again, have you counted the cost?”
“I have lived virtually alone all my life,” she said, “I think I can bear sickness and pain alone. Humphrey, Humphrey, let me make one excuse for myself? I did not know what marriage was when I tried my experiment.”
He looked down on her upturned face with a great tenderness.
“I don’t blame you, dear. You are sinning terribly, but you know not what you do. Your sin is unnatural, for it is against yourself, you have let a morbid spot in you grow sick to rottenness, and as time goes on, child, you will suffer as few women know how to suffer, you are sinning ignorantly, and your punishment will come, but from another hand than mine. But there is one thing I will speak of,” he said, with grave sternness, “see that you are not ashamed of your motherhood. Forget, if you like, that the child is in part mine, do not forget that it is wholly yours, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, beware, at least, of sinning knowingly. You have had a warning, Gwen, in this, profit by it, don’t let this child grow up without knowing the everyday uses of a mother. Don’t let any other human creature suffer in this as you have suffered.”
Gwen listened to him with bent head, and every word dropped into her soul like molten lead.
There was an awful resistless finality in every word of his, in every tone. He had to stoop to catch her answer, and her face was almost livid.
“I will try and be a good mother, I have no wish to fail in every relation of life.”
“Don’t move until I return,” said her husband.
He went into the dining-room and brought back some wine. She turned on him a look of dumb protest, but she drank it. “And now, come to this sofa and lie down.”