"I don't suppose there's any use in my saying anything. We might get quarreling again, and naturally you wouldn't believe me, anyway. I agree with you that it's impossible for us to live together any longer. But I can't forbear from telling you, James, that you've done me a great wrong. You've said things ... oh, you've said things so wrong to-night that it seems as if God himself—if there is a God—would speak from heaven and show you how wrong you are! But there's no use in mere human beings saying anything at a time like this....
"You've been a very wicked man to-night, James. May God forgive you for it."
She turned away with an air of finality and started to prepare for bed. She hung up her evening wrap in the closet and walked over to her bureau. She took off what jewelry she wore and put it carefully away, and then she seemed to hesitate. She stood looking at her reflection in the mirror a moment, but found no inspiration there. She walked inconclusively across the room and then back. Finally she stopped near James, with her back toward him.
"It seems an absurd thing to ask," she said, "but would you mind? As you say, it's the last time...."
"Certainly," said James.
CHAPTER XII
A ROD OF IRON
It is all very well to be suddenly called back to town by telegram on important business, but suppose the business is wholly fictitious—what are you going to do with yourself when you get there? Especially if you have your own reasons for not wanting Business to know that you have returned before the appointed time, and consequently are shy about appearing in clubs and places where it would be likely to get wind of your presence? And if, moreover, your apartment has been closed and all the servants sent off on a holiday?
That is a fair example of the mean way sordid detail has of encroaching on the big things of life and destroying what little pleasure we might take in their dramatic value. When he arrived in New York James had the chastened, exalted feeling of one who has just passed a great and disagreeable crisis and got through with it, on the whole, very tolerably well. What he wanted most was to return to the routine of his old life and, so far as was possible, drown the nightmare recollection in a flood of work. Instead of which he found idleness and domestic inconvenience staring him in the face. He also saw that he was going to be lonely. He walked through the dark and empty rooms of his apartment and reflected what a difference even the mute presence of a servant would make. He longed whole-heartedly for Stodger—for Stodger since we last saw him has been promoted into manhood by nature and into full-fledged chauffeurhood—with the official appellation of McClintock, if you please—by James. With Stodger, who still retained jurisdiction over his suits and shoes, James was accustomed, when they were alone together, to throw off his role of employer and embark on technical heart-to-heart talks on differential gears and multiple-disc clutches and kindred intimate subjects. But Stodger was tasting the joys of leave of absence on full pay, James knew not where.