The Business of Life

by Robert W. Chambers

But there were so many ways; and the easiest had been to forgive him, surrender utterly, cling to him, love him with every tenderness and grace and accomplishment and art and instinct that was hers—with all of her ardent youth, all of her dawning emotion, all of her undeveloped passion.

That had been the easier way in the crisis which stunned and terrified her—to seek shelter, not give it; to surrender, not to withhold.

But whether through wisdom or instinct, she seemed to see farther than the moment—to divine, somehow, that his salvation and hers lay not only in forgiveness and love, but in her power to give or withhold; her freedom to exact what justly was her due; in the preservation of her individuality with all its prerogative, its liberty of choice, its self-respect unshaken, its authority unweakened and undiminished.

To yield when he was not qualified to receive such supreme surrender boded ill for her, and ultimately for him; for it made of her merely an instrument.

Somehow she seemed to know that sometime, for her, would come a moment of final victory; and in that moment only her utter surrender could make the victory eternal and complete.

And until that moment came she would not surrender prematurely. She had a fight on her hands; she knew it; she must do her best, though her own heart were a sword that pierced her with every throb. For his sake she would deny; for his sake remain aloof from the lesser love, inviolate, powerful, mistress of herself and of her destiny.

And yet—she was his wife. And, after all was said and done, she understood that no dual sovereignty ever is possible; that one or the other must have the final decision; and that if, when it came to that, his ultimate authority failed him, then their spiritual union was a failure, though the material one might endure for a while.

And so, believing this, honest with herself and with him, she had offered him her fealty—a white blossom and her key lying beside it in the palm of her hand—in acknowledgment that the supreme decision lay with him.

He had not failed her; the final authority still lay with him. Only that knowledge had sustained her during the long night.