There will be no use in your coming on here or trying to find me. I have made up my mind. We could never be happy together, so the fewer words said about parting the better. Send your answer regarding the children to the New York post-office. I shall expect it for a week. The money you loaned me is gone with the rest, but they can't turn you out of your house until the mortgage is due, if you pay the interest. Some day I shall pay it back to you. I wish you well, and consider I'm doing us both a service in cutting loose from you.
Good-by, EMIL.
It seemed to Constance when she had finished this letter as though her heart would stop. Was this reality? Could it be that her husband was abandoning her and her children in cold blood, treating the sacred ties of marriage as lightly as though they were straws? Alas! his cruel words stared her in the face, freezing her soul, which had been sick for days over his unexplained absence; sick from dread. Yes, she had guessed; but she had put the horror from her as impossible, despite his hints. Unbalanced and embittered as he was, he could not be so unkind. Now she was face to face with certainty; there was no room for hope. It was true; so cruelly inhumanly true that her brain felt dazed and numb. She gazed at his writing stony-eyed and appalled, limp with dismay and forlornness. To avoid falling she put out her hand to the table, and the contact of her own flesh served to readjust her consciousness. Seating herself she swept her fingers across her brow to rally her senses, and read the letter again slowly. Then mortification succeeded dismay, and resentment followed close on mortification. The wounded pride of the wife, the indignation of the mother protesting for her children asserted themselves, causing her to flush to the roots of her hair and her pulses to tingle. Coward! Unnatural father! What had she done to deserve this? What had they done, helpless innocents? Give them up to him? Her children, now the only joy of her life? Never. They could not both have them. Why should he who had left them in the lurch have either? She could hear their prattle in the adjoining room, poor little souls, unconscious of their misery. Then her sense of wounded pride and her anger were forgotten in the agony of a possible separation from her offspring, and in the loss of her husband's love, and her tense nerves gave way. "Oh, Emil, my husband, how could you?" she moaned, and burying her face in her hands she let sorrow have full sway.
"Oh, Emil, my husband, how could you?" she moaned
When she had dried her eyes she was prepared to face the situation and to think more calmly. Certain points were now clear. Emil was right; since he had ceased to love her, they could never be happy together. So far as she could see, she had not been at fault, though he had persuaded himself that she was to blame. She would never have left him; but now that he had deserted her, she could dare to admit that their souls were not in accord, and that her love and respect for him had been waning in spite of herself for many months. She would not attempt to follow him, and she desired to retain both the children. Was it her duty to let Emil have one of them? Here was the only harassing point in the plans for the future which she was formulating. Would it be fair to the children to separate them? Would she be justified in keeping them both, in view of the affection which their father had professed for his own flesh and blood? As Emil had declared, he and she had made a mess of their marriage, and they were to separate. Was it fair to him to keep both the boy and the girl? Ah, but she could not bear the thought of giving up either. She felt the need of counsel. To whom could she turn? Who were her friends? She thought of Mr. Prentiss, and she remembered her husband's taunt concerning her philanthropic church friends with a sense of shrinking. The church offered itself as a refuge to all in the hour of distress, but it seemed to her as though she would rather starve than apply to Mr. Prentiss. Not that she was afraid of starving. That side of the situation had no terrors for her. She was almost glad at the idea of supporting herself and her darlings, and she had entire confidence in her ability to do so, even though she were forced to scrub floors. But she yearned for the sympathy and advice of a friend. How lonely she had suddenly become in this large, busy city! Emil had evinced little desire, especially of late, to make friends in the neighborhood, and she had been so absorbed in her home and her husband's interest that she had disregarded her social opportunities. He had been apt to speak slightingly of their acquaintances as people whom he would soon outstrip in the struggle of life. And now she was the poorest of the poor, the saddest of the sad, one of the lowly common people for whom her doctor father's heart had ever cherished fond and patient sympathy. She was one of them now herself. How different had been her dreams and her ambition. To think that she, Constance Forbes, had come to this—a wife abandoned by her husband, alone and friendless, with only the semblance of a roof to shelter her and her children. But all this was nothing if only she need not part with either of her babies. She would be able to support them, never fear, and with them to support she could be brave, even happy. But without them? No, no, Emil had forsaken her, she had lost her faith in him, he was not worthy of the sacrifice; she dared not trust him; he had no right to either. She could not, she would not let either go.
When the morning came she was more firmly of the same opinion, and she composed this reply to her husband:
Emil:
I have your letter and my heart is filled with sorrow. I cannot compel you to live with me against your will. God knows I have tried to be a loving, dutiful, and sympathetic wife, but it seems I have failed to please you. It is true that our ideas of how to live and what is right are very different. I have been aware of that in my secret soul, but for your sake I did my best to adopt your point of view. Now I shall be free to follow my own. Since you no longer love me, I am not sorry that we are to live apart, for I can see now that I have suffered much on your account. But I do not choose to reproach you. What good would it do? Besides you are the father of my children—poor little things. I do not think that I should have written to you at all if it were not for the question what is to become of them.