A Fool There Was

by Porter Emerson Browne

Kathryn shook her head, wearily.

"I can't do that, either."

The other turned.

"Then what are you going to do?" she demanded. "Are you going on forever being honest neither with him nor with yourself—compromising on the one hand with your womanhood, on the other with your selfishness? How long has it been since you made the slightest effort to see him, or to send anyone to him?"

Kathryn answered, slowly:

"Not since the time I tried to go, and Tom went before me. I—I have thought, often, of going…. But, somehow, I've been—afraid." In almost a whisper, she repeated, "Yes…. Afraid!"

Elinor VanVorst raised her shoulders in an expressive gesture. It conveyed more plainly than could words that her end of the argument was done—her case was rested.

Kathryn considered long, earnestly, in silence. Divorce him! Divorce John Schuyler! It had occurred to her—it had occurred to her in the long silences of the night—in the thousands of aeons that had lain, ofttimes, between the setting of the sun and the rising thereof…. Divorce him! … It was a thought that stung. He had been to her all that any man could have been. He had been a man of whom her head was proud and her heart fond with the great love that lies in the heart of a good woman. He it was, and God, who had given her the little child that she could see from where she sat, rolling, a tumbled little heap of white lace and whirling brown legs on the broad expanse of the green lawn. He it was who had taken the first of her life—who had shown her what it was to live….

And then this thing had come—this awful, hideous thing that had stretched even her very life to the breaking point, and drained from it the wealth of sweetness to the uttermost drop…. She felt resentment, yes, and horror, and disgust. Yet there were other things, she knew, though she could not have told how she knew. There was something that was hidden—something unknown and unknowable….

Long, she thought, and earnestly—as she had thought so many, many times before—times without end…. At length she rose. Firm little chin was set; violet eyes were firm.