“Tell me what it’s all about,” she cried, turning to the girl. “You always were too ’asty, Bridget. Even if there’s another woman, it’s no good flying in the face of Providence. What a woman’s got to do is to humor a man till he comes round to ’er again. I’ve been through it all with your father, Bid; so I know. It doesn’t do to be too hard on men; at any rate, it’s no use. They’re all alike. Women have all got to bear it, and you’ll ’ave to bear it too. There is another woman, I suppose?”
“Oh! as to that—” Bridget gave a little scornful laugh, and left the sentence unfinished.
“But, mother, you loved father!” she said, turning eagerly to her. “You love him!”
“Yes, of course; ’Enry and I always got on very well together, on the whole. He’s got ’is faults, of course; we all ’ave. He’s a violent-tempered man, as you know, but—”
“Well, but I don’t love my husband. I—I—despise him. He doesn’t love me. That is why I have decided to leave him—isn’t that reason enough?”
“Reason?” repeated Mrs. Ruan, beginning to cry again. “You have no reason in you, Bridget. Suppose every one was to leave their husbands just because they didn’t love them, as you call it.”
“The world would be a much cleaner place,” said Bridget, in a tense voice.
“I must say I have no patience with these new-fangled, high-flown ideas, as your father would say,” Mrs. Ruan exclaimed. “No one ever thought of such things in my young days. We should have thought it wicked and immodest. And so it is!” she went on, suddenly recollecting that she had entirely forgotten a powerful argument. “It’s sinful. What does the Bible say?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” returned Bridget, sighing wearily.
“Well, the Prayer-Book, at any rate, says, ‘till death us do part,’—it’s God’s will.”