“That is just the point,” Helen interrupted. “I absolved you of your obligations to me weeks ago, so that part of it is all settled.”
“But I did not absolve myself. I don’t understand what I did or why I did it. Day by day I felt myself slipping further and further away from you. I was not strong enough to appreciate what was taking place, and was powerless to resist.”
“But I understood it even then,” Helen continued. “I recognized that our marriage was the first mistake, and decided that I would do my part toward remedying the error with as little pain as possible.”
“Our marriage was no mistake, except my own unfitness to be your husband!” Armstrong cried, bitterly.
“Don’t, Jack,” Helen again pleaded. “You see, I have had a much longer time to think the matter out.”
“I was all right until I came under the influence, which completely changed me, just as you told me it did, time and again. Then, instead of being developed by it as I should have been, I assimilated nothing but its limitations and began to go backward.”
“You must have assimilated far more than that,” Helen insisted, “for your personal development through it all has been tremendous. Otherwise this could not be.”
“Listen, Helen.” Armstrong was desperate. “Let me tell you how far down I have gone. You know how eager I was, when we first came, to accomplish some great achievement. You know how much I admired the works and personalities of those grand old characters of whom you have so often heard me speak. Well, I took up my work. I studied these characters, I wrote about them, I tried to assimilate their principles and to express them in words. At length the work was finished. Cerini praised it, and I felt that I had proved myself equal to the undertaking.”
“And so you had,” Helen interrupted. “Cerini told me so himself.”
“Cerini knows nothing of how ignominiously I failed to apply these principles to myself. He has read the noble platitudes with which my book is filled; you have experienced the unworthy personal expressions as they have appeared in my every-day life.”