"What makes you say that! You don't really believe it in your heart. You loved John when you married him. You were happy with him afterwards."
"I don't believe that any girl, no matter what experience she has had, can really love a man before she is married to him. I was sentimental, romantic, and I thought my liking for a man was love. I wanted to love,—all girls do. But I didn't know enough to love. It is all blind, blind! I might have had that feeling about other men, the feeling I had for John before…. Then comes marriage, and it's luck, all luck, whether love comes, whether it is right—the thing for you—the only one. Sometimes it is,—often enough for those who don't ask much, perhaps. But it was wrong for John and me. I knew it from the first days,—those when we tried to think we were happiest. I have never confessed this to a human being,—never to John. But it was so, Vick! I didn't know then what was the matter—why it was wrong. But a woman suspects then…. Those first days I was wretched,—I wanted to cry out to him: 'Can't you see it is wrong? You and I must part; our way is not the same!' But he seemed content. And there was father and mother and everything to hold us to the mistake. And of course I felt that it might come in time, that somehow it was my fault. I even thought that love as I wanted it was impossible, could never exist for a woman…. So the child came, and I went through the motions. And the gap grew between us each year as I came to be a woman. I saw the gap, but I thought it was always so, almost always, between husbands and wives, and I went on going through the motions…. That was why I was ill,—yes, the real reason, because we were not fitted to be married. Because I tried to do something against nature,—tried to live married to a man who wasn't really my husband!"
Her voice sank exhausted. Never before even to herself had she said it all,—summed up that within her which must justify her revolt. Vickers felt the hot truth to her of her words; but granted the truth, was it enough?
Before he could speak she went on wearily, as if compelled:—
"But it might have gone on so until the end, until I died. Perhaps I could have got used to it, living like that, and fussed around like other women over amusements and charities and houses,—all the sawdust stuffing of life—and become a useless old woman, and not cared, not known."
She drew a deep breath.
"But you see—I know now—what the other is! I have known since"—her voice sank to a whisper—"that afternoon when I kissed him for the first time." She shuddered. "I am not a stick, Vick! I—am a woman! … No, don't say it!" She clasped his arm tightly. "You don't like Tom. You can't understand. He may not be what I feel he is—he may be less of a man for men than John. But I think it makes little difference to a woman so long as she loves—what the man is to others. To her he is all men!"
With this cry her voice softened, and now she spoke calmly. "And you see I can give him something! I can give HIM love and joy. And more—I could make it possible for him to do what he wants to do with his life. I would go with him to some beautiful spot, where he could be all that he has it in him to be, and I could watch and love. Oh, we should be enough, he and I!"
"Dear, that you can never tell! … It was not enough for us—for her. You can't tell when you are like this, ready to give all, whether it's what the other most needs or really wants."
In spite of Isabelle's doubting smile, Vickers hurried on,—willing now to show his scar.