“I thought,” Erard continued slowly, “you were arranging yourself for another career.”
Mrs. Wilbur blushed unreasonably.
“I had almost begun to count on your help in my next work.” She said nothing, thus inviting him to explain his meaning. “You mustn’t throw yourself away. You are too fine for—this.” His gesture was expressive.
“Too feeble, rather,” she protested.
“You will never gain peace until your mind is satisfied.”
He seemed to read her thoughts, to have accompanied her these past months, and now to say the fitting, final word.
“It would take a great deal—a catastrophe—to move me. Woman’s modesty is one-half inertia.”
“The catastrophe has come, perhaps.”
Mrs. Wilbur shook her head. “I don’t know. Yet sometimes I think so.”
They were silent until the carriage reached the boulevard where the Wilburs’ house was situated.