"I told you that wasn't true!"
"It has been true for me, Charlotte."
"It needn't be now. While Eric was a baby, it may have been true for you, but there's no reason in the world why it should be now."
"Well, it is true for me now—it will be true for me always. And yet——"
And then, because disillusion and bitterness were strong upon Sheila, Charlotte got the whole story out of her, from the first revelation of Ted's attitude toward a married woman's art to the final climax of Eric's illness, her self-blame and her renunciation of her work. Even while she told it, she knew that she would reproach herself afterward for disloyalty to Ted, but the sheer relief of confiding it to a sympathetic listener was too much for her scruples.
"I never heard of anything so outrageous in my life!" exclaimed Charlotte, when the story was ended. "It's barbarous—barbarous!"
Not a word of her final clear vision of her husband, her belated disappointment in him, had Sheila uttered. For that at least she had been too loyal. But already she repented having betrayed his views in regard to the married woman-artist. So well she knew what Charlotte must think of them, indeed, that she now felt impelled to a defense:
"Of course it hasn't been Ted's fault—you mustn't feel that he's to blame."
"Mustn't I?" asked Charlotte drily. And then, "My dear girl, he has been to blame—absolutely, unforgivably to blame. It makes me wild to think of his narrow-minded, pig-headed selfishness. And that you should have given in to it—! Oh, Sheila, Sheila, where is your independence, your sense of your rights as an individual, a human being? Are you a cave woman—that you should be just your husband's docile chattel?" And Charlotte sprang from her chair and began to pace the veranda, urged by the fierce energy of her anger.
"I said it had been Ted's fault—this spoiling of your life," she went on presently, "but it's been your fault, too, Sheila. It's been your fault for giving in to him."