At this moment Bragdon entered the room. His face still wore the stern expression she had noted, which gave him the look of age.
"What are you doing?" he demanded abruptly.
"Don't you see—packing!"
"What for?... I've cabled home for more money—I'm going to stay here and paint."
She thought swiftly to herself that the Other had persuaded him to do what he had refused to do for her. She made no reply, but continued to put things blindly into the trunk.
XI
CRISIS
When two human beings—above all when man and wife—meet at such tense moments, one of Virgil's beneficent clouds should descend upon them, hiding all, and they should be wafted apart to remote places, there to abide until once more a sense of the proportion and the harmony in this mundane system has taken possession of them, and they have become, if not gods and goddesses, at least reasonable human beings. The least the historian can do under the circumstances is to imitate Virgil and draw a merciful veil between the cruel battle-field and all profane eyes. The more so as few of the hot words then uttered, the sharp agony displayed, the giving and the baring of wounds have any real effect upon the result. What is done counts, and that is about all, always.
It might be that afterwards Milly derived some deeper understanding of herself, of her husband, and of the married way of life from the agony she then experienced. It might be that the young artist, headstrong in his first triumphant mastery, the first achievement of his whole being, entertained, for some moments at least, the idea of cutting the knot then and there and taking his freedom which he had surrendered at the altar, choosing what might seem to him then spiritual life instead of prolonged death. The blood was in his head, the scent of delirious deeds which he knew now that he could do. But he was an honest and loyal young American, no matter what he had done: he could not hesitate long. One glance at the sleeping form of his small child, dependent upon him for the best in life, probably settled the matter.