“Tell Mr. Saunders I am not at home,” she would say haughtily.
You see, according to that other self, it was all as easy as rolling off a log. The trouble with him is that he has no practical knowledge of the world; but at the moment of telling, he would put the glamour of his ideas over me. It seemed too seductively easy, and it was hard for me to point out to him that, excellent and satisfactory as this conversation was, it had the fatal defect of not being the way Felicia and I talked. This didn’t impress him at all; he merely invented another conversation which didn’t put Felicia in nearly as pleasing a light, but gave me scope for firmness and dignity. I appeared really very well in the face of her perverseness. Proud of myself, I was to end by saying, without anger, but with decision:
“And, Felicia, if you can find no way of stopping this objectionable young man’s attentions, I can!”
Now all these pleasant plays of fancy were 480 ended forever by my acknowledging my weakness.
Felicia is fond of saying, “Men differ, but all husbands are alike.” I think she believes this to be an epigram. But O, Felicia, all husbands are not alike; there are those who can take care of their wives, and those who can’t,—those who can say the word in time, and those who must sit back weakly silent, morosely sucking their paws while their wives burn their fingers.
Well, after all, I thought, perhaps it was better so. There would be negative benefits. This way, at least, I shouldn’t make Felicia cry. I wouldn’t say anything I should be sorry for afterwards, if I said nothing. I had only to sit pusillanimously quiet until Saunders was guilty of some impertinence, then there would be no more Saunders. I ground my teeth and thanked God I was not jealous.
But I was soon undeceived if I thought that things were going along as they had been. First there came a little, tiny, malformed, wordless doubt, which I strangled as it was born; then a suspicion I wouldn’t see. I closed my eyes. In my loyalty I lied even to myself, but my bolder self in his inexorable fashion made me look at it at last.
“Felicia,” he asserted, “is keeping something from you. Felicia is unhappy about something.”
It was true, I couldn’t deny it, I had ever so many proofs:
(1) I had caught Felicia watching me with melancholy, speculative eyes. When I asked her what was the matter, she replied “Nothing.”