If she were, indeed, gone, then his home was wrecked in consequence of his passing passion for a woman he had always thought in no wise equal to the wife whom he had dishonored, whom he, nevertheless, discovered he treasured and valued and could not lightly lose. What folly—what poor logic—what false judgment! Neither logic nor judgment entered into the case, and he knew it, nor did an overwhelming temptation of a grand passion justify even remotely his behavior in his eyes; he admitted his weakness, his facile drifting, when he took no means to stem the tide, his half-cynical pastime. It looked to have cost him dear.
As sentiments whose characters have changed in the unalterable and fickle moment of time, when love is love no more and desire non-existent, become as unpleasant and safe as they were secret and dangerous, so he thought of his late friendship with anger and held it cheap, a priceless imitation for which perhaps he had given a pure jewel in stupid exchange.
If she did not come in by nine o’clock he would go to her, to her mother’s, where she had undoubtedly taken refuge in the sudden storm that had driven her from her own doors. Once there, facing her, what should he say? She was so simple, so direct, so honest, so unworldly. He was too intelligent not to comprehend all that occasion would require of his duplicity, subtleties, to dupe her, to make her believe—what? He could not make her now believe anything but the truth. Her entire confidence had spared him hitherto the necessity of lying to her. He owed her that.
As he said this to himself, the debt of everything that he owed came very practically to his mind. All the peace he had known; agreeable and courteous companionship whenever he had sought it; the grace and comfort of a well-ordered household; and, if anything further, he had for a long time been too careless to foster it, unheedful of its value. If she were only a habit, she was a fixed one, more steadfast than any other hitherto formed. What should he say to her? Since he could not trick her to regard the situation with anything but disgust and anger, he would tell her the truth and plead weakness without love and beg her forgiveness. His nature twinged at this, a burning flush made him hot all over. A distaste of the cowardice in such confessions nauseated him. If she forgave him, if he made a clean breast of it in loyalty to her and disloyalty to the other, things would never be the same again. Between them there would always be his weakness and her nobility. Before humiliations such as these some natures do not shrink. Evremond shivered at it with all his sensibility and pride.
“Not,” he acknowledged, “that I am too beastly proud to own up, but that I dread the result to us both. Que faire?”
At nine o’clock, his nerves on the rack, his control gone, he telephoned to the little hotel, 75 Rue Docteur Blanche.
“Mrs. Evremond has not been at her mother’s for several days—who wished to know? Was there anything wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He put up the receiver—a new thought seized him horribly. Why had he supposed this the one and only solution—the quiet solution to his wife’s problem, the sequence to her discovery? What if she had suddenly, surprisingly, taken it to heart, and it had unnerved her? He had not thought of her or her feelings. She loved him—she had loved him, he knew it well—dearly.
“What if she had——” he exclaimed, aloud, white with emotion. Then: “Nonsense,” he exclaimed, “she is not hysterical—she is control itself.”