“If you only knew,” began Cecily, leaning forward and speaking impressively, “if you only knew how thankful I am to be out of love. To have peace, to have freedom, to have found myself again. It’s just what I said. It’s just as though I had stepped out of hell, to find the blue sky over my head, and the grass underfoot, and the flowers everywhere, all the dear, beautiful, natural things—that never hurt one.”
“I know,” said Rose. “But that’s just a phase, Cis—a reaction. Don’t think you’re done with love because you dread it. You’re young. You have tremendous vitality. Look at yourself now in the glass, and think what you were two years ago. You’re not the sort of woman for whom things are very easily over.”
“And even so,” interrupted Cecily, passionately, “granted that what you say is true, would you have me give up Dick’s friendship?—a friendship which was forced upon me by my husband, for a reason which he has since made sufficiently obvious?”
“I would have you completely realize the situation, that’s all,” returned Rose, calmly. “After that, I’m quite content to leave it with you. What I can’t stand, is the silly way in which people deceive themselves, and then stand in amazement, or rend heaven with their cries, when their celestial palaces, whose foundation a fool might have seen to be rotten, come tumbling about their ears. Do what you choose as long as you know you’re doing it, is what I would say to any but the congenital idiot.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Cecily laughed.
“I like you when you turn on the vinegar and vitriol,” she said. “Have another cigarette?”
CHAPTER XIX
FOR some considerable time past, the plastic heart of Philippa had been undergoing its periodical regeneration. It now yearned in all sincerity for the domestic life. Nigel’s devotion was so beautiful; his attitude of reverential adoration was so supremely right and touching. It was the forever profoundly necessary and inevitable attitude of the eternal man towards the eternal woman. At this time she thought and talked much about the sacred name of “wife.” So intense was her conviction that the true meaning of life lay in the sacramental view of marriage, that Robert and his claims sank into the background of her consciousness. In her heart, which she pictured as a sort of solemn temple of purity, Nigel was radiantly enthroned. Robert and his salary were but the steps to the altar, necessary steps, for her eager feet were still shackled by the weight of debts; by still more embarrassing encumbrances belonging to the old life, when she still sat in darkness, and knew not the light. For this reason, though Philippa strove to look upon her obligation as a penitential discipline, it was still necessary to be “nice to Robert.” As yet she could not afford to break to him, however sorrowfully, that their paths must in future diverge; hers towards the stars, and his—well, in fact, wherever he pleased. She was no longer particularly interested in Robert’s path. It had ceased to concern her. It was, however, of him she was thinking as she walked towards Westminster one morning, on her way to her secretarial duties.
Poor Robert! But he had been very disappointing. In him she had not found the satisfaction of those higher intellectual and spiritual needs for which chiefly, of course, she had joined her life—for a certain time—with his. In brooding over this regrettable fact, Philippa honestly lost sight, for the moment, of any tangible advantage which her friendship with him continued to involve. Her impulse was to sever the connection at once. Then the memory of pressing money difficulties brought her back with a shock to actualities, and the realization that with however generous a sum coming in every quarter, it would take many months of plain living and rigorous saving to free herself—for Nigel. There was nothing for it, then. She must stifle aspirations, quiet the beating of her wings, and continue to draw her salary. She sighed. Robert was becoming very trying. His fortnight’s holiday had been a great relief to her. It had enabled her, for one thing, to see a great deal of Nigel, and thus to strengthen and confirm her new attitude towards “life at its worthiest,” as she now expressed her emotions concerning her future union with the poet.
This was the first morning after Robert’s return; it was in obedience to a note received from him the preceding evening that she was now on her way to Westminster to resume duties and to assume emotions which had become alike distasteful. She wondered why she had ever thought Robert charming. He bored her terribly now. She did not know which bored her most, his fits of gloomy depression about his work, or his increasingly rare fits of devotion to herself. That she welcomed even while she dreaded, the knowledge that Robert’s passion for her was decreasing, was a significant measure of her boredom. His infatuation was passing; and she rejoiced, for this would make the break with him easier. But it must not go too soon—not till, well—not till she was free—for Nigel.