Meanwhile the poison of their Judas life was wearing upon their own souls. Forbes was growing restive to be at work again upon his career. To be the messenger-boy of a woman's summons grew increasingly irksome. He dreaded an official cognizance of his new career as home-wrecker, and his innate decency was more and more rebellious against the outrages he committed incessantly against his self-respect, his creeds, his codes, his position.
And, last of all, a strange new horror assailed the basking luxury of Persis. It dawned upon her that in spite of all her precautions nature was about to make the use of her that all this rapture was for. Her physician confirmed her dread, and congratulated her—and her husband! She dared not ask his aid in foiling her destiny. She dared not ask anybody's aid. Her life of pleasure-hunting had made a coward of her.
And so at length remorse found a lodging even in her voluptuous life. She understood the fearful responsibility she had assumed to a future soul. And she groveled in abject self-derision to think that even she could not be sure of her child's legitimacy. So helpless a vessel for nature's chemistry she was that she was not permitted to know even that! And she could not so much as be sure whether she even wished it to be love's child or the law's.
The treachery to her own child was so hideous that she would have killed herself had she not dreaded to add murder to suicide. She longed to pour out her woes to Forbes, but she could not bring herself to confess her degradation. He only knew that somehow all the rapture was gone from their union. It had lost even that compensation.
The thought came to Forbes that there was but one way to make their life livable—to make it frank and public. Persis must enter the divorce court, and as soon as possible after marry him. That sort of solution for such intrigues had been much practised of late. It had become so fashionable that protest was losing its vigor.
He opened the subject to Persis. She shrank from it with revulsion. She could not tell him her secret even then; but it was a mighty argument to herself against such a step. She gave other reasons cogent enough in her opinion.
"Anything but divorce, Harvey. I'd rather die than go through it. Willie couldn't do the polite thing. He is a Catholic, you know, and his mother's Spanish blood boils at the divorce habit."
"Then if he won't give it, you can take it, anyway."
"But suppose he should fight. Suppose he should set detectives going back over our trail or bribe the servants. Look at this morning's papers—the ghastly head-lines about Mrs. Tom Corliss—her photographs! Did you read the testimony of the maid at that big hotel? Suppose Willie should get hold of that bellboy who was so insolent to us—the one we didn't dare rebuke and had to tip so heavily. Did you read Mrs. Tom's love letters yesterday? Only one paper dared to print them all. Mrs. Neff said everybody bought it specially. Mrs. Neff laughed till she cried.
"Wouldn't you rather die than go through with it? And, my God, how they would tear me to pieces! The poor people and the middle-class people push through the divorce court in droves—eighty divorces were granted in two hours the other day, Murray Ten Eyck was telling me, and only one paper mentioned it—in a paragraph! But if Mrs. Tom Corliss gets the front page, what wouldn't they give to Mrs. Willie Enslee?"