“Well?”
“If we have children,” she went on in a low voice, “they will be born into a world which is slowly freeing itself from the chains of prejudice, and of hateful, perverted morality. By the time they are old enough to understand, there will be still more free men and women than there are now, who dare to face realities. They will be their friends. But in any case,” she raised her big eyes, and looked full at her friend, “I can’t help believing, Helen, that his children and mine, would rather be born of a man and woman who love each other, than of a legal marriage where contempt was the strongest feeling, on one side, at least! Would you care to see me with a child, the child of a father I could only pray it might never love? If I have a child now, it will have no legal right to its father’s name, certainly; but I shall not bear it with shame, with self-reproach, with terrible pity for the burden of life I have laid upon it!” Her face was flushed with vivid color.
“If he—if Mr. Travers—divorces you, shall you—?” Helen faltered.
“Marry? No. What will be the use?” Bridget answered. “Haven’t we agreed a thousand times that marriage is only a marriage so long as there is love and tenderness on both sides? So long as Larry’s love and tenderness lasts for me, I shall be his wife,” she added softly.
“And—if it fails?”
“Well, if it fails, will it be any comfort, any compensation to me that I am his legal wife? On the contrary, how awful—how terrible to think that he hates the bond; chafes under it. Oh, I know, I know! I’m not saying that doing away with marriage is any cure for the sorrows which may come. It will happen a thousand times, of course, that love lasts on one side and not on the other. But that is the tragedy of life,—terrible, but inevitable. And how does the legal bond which holds two people chained together, when one loves and the other hates, mend matters? I know if I loved my husband, but he wished to be free, though it killed me, I would say—go. Wouldn’t it be better to endure separation, once for all, than to bear the daily, hourly agony of seeing his indifference, his impatience, or, worse still, of watching him trying to disguise it?”
There was a long silence. Helen turned to her at last. Her eyes were wet with tears, but she smiled.
“I’ve been trying to put myself in your place,” she said gently. “From your point of view I think you are right. I,” she hesitated, “I recognize a higher law; you don’t. Oh, Bid, understand me! I know yours is no cheap, unthinking unbelief. You can’t help it. Perhaps, after all, belief or unbelief is a matter of temperament. Anyhow, I understand, I sympathize. You are doing what you believe to be right. If only,” she faltered, “I knew you were going to be happy! But, as you say, we must leave that. In any case, God bless you, dear!” she whispered huskily.
They walked home through the sunny fields, where the poppies and daisies were shed broadcast in sheets of white and scarlet. The larks sang madly in the dazzling blue, and the steady pulsing of the sea made a deep, slow music. They reached the little pine-surrounded café where they were staying, and strolled slowly up the garden, in which the grass grew long and rank, and purple and red zinnias blazed in the overgrown flower-beds.