"Don't be sorry for me," Charlotte interrupted warningly. "Don't be sorry for me. I may marry him yet!"
And a moment later, she was swinging down the street, as serene and independent as if she had never known—much less, confessed—the pain of unrequited love.
As Sheila looked after her, she noticed again the gold of her hair, the beautiful, free carriage of her shoulders—and now she felt no pleasure in them. Rather was she conscious of a sharp little pang of envy, and with it, sounded the echo of Charlotte's last words—"I may marry him yet!" Charlotte was a splendid, gallant creature; she might marry Peter. And then Sheila, feeling that envious pang again and still more sharply, demanded of herself in swift terror: "Am I jealous?—am I jealous of Charlotte because Peter may come to love her?"
Oh, it couldn't be that!—it couldn't! It was impossible that she should be jealous about any man but her husband. For she and Ted loved each other—they did love each other, whatever had been their mistakes with each other.
She called Eric to her, and he left his playmate on the lawn and came, smiling. She caught him to her, with a sort of frightened passion:
"Kiss mother, darling!"
He looked back over his shoulder at the boy who was waiting for him. "With him there?" he inquired reluctantly, already shy of caresses before his own sex.
But Sheila, usually the most considerate and tactful of mothers, amazed him now by ignoring his hint. Still with that terrified passion, she kissed him not once, but many times—her son and Ted's! Her son and Ted's! Then, leaving him standing there in his astonished embarrassment, she went into the house and up to her own room, there to sit and stare before her at things unseen, but all too visible to her.
So Ted had been right after all; right in objecting to her being so much with Peter. It had been unwise; moreover, it had been wrong, all that companionship of the past winter. For it had brought her to this; it had brought her so to depend upon Peter that she could not be happy unless he was often with her; it had brought her so to care for him that she could not think of him in relation to another woman without jealousy. It had brought her to this—and she was a wife and mother!
She had been ashamed when Ted had told her that she would get herself talked about in connection with Peter, and still more ashamed when he had accused her of "running after" Peter. But that had been an endurable shame, for at the heart of it had been self-respect, the indestructible pride of perfect innocence. But the shame that surged over her now was the agonizing shame of guilt, the shame of utter self-scorn, self-loathing. She—a wife, a mother!—cared for a man not her husband; cared for him in a way that made it torment to her to think of his marrying another woman. Hideous and unbelievable though it was, she cared for him so much. She had cared for him even while she was declaring to Charlotte—and later, to herself—that she loved her husband. She cared for Peter—even now, facing the truth and admitting it, she would not use the word, love—she cared for Peter, and she was Ted's wife, the mother of Ted's son. Not even the touch of that little son had been powerful to blind her. She cared!—she cared!