“But you don’t enter into this particular interest of his, even to please him, as he did to please you.”
“Because I appreciate from the experience I have just mentioned how little real satisfaction it would give either one of us. Looking back, I feel that I was positively selfish to let him go to those concerts with me, and I shall never inflict them on him again. I am sure that he knows how I feel, and I think he ought to be grateful for my consideration.”
Inez pressed Helen’s hand. “You ought to know best, dear,” she answered. “You both possess such wonderful possibilities that it would be a shame not to combine them. It seems to me that you might come to an appreciation of each other’s interests by becoming familiar with them.—I wonder if you realize what a man your husband is?”
Helen leaned over and kissed her impulsively. “I realize more than I ever intend to let him know, dear child. He would become unbearably conceited were he even to guess how much he has already become to me. I really did not want to marry him—or to marry any one—but he swept away every objection, just as he always does, and now I find myself wondering how in the world I ever existed without him. Oh, Inez”—Helen’s face became tense in her earnestness—“we girls think we know a whole lot about marriage. We anticipate it—we dread it; but, when one actually enters into her new estate, she knows how infinitely more it is to be anticipated, if happy, than her fondest dream. But if unhappy—then her dread must have been infinitesimal compared with the reality.”
“‘Marriage is either a complete union or a complete isolation,’” quoted Inez.
“As I tell you, Jack and I understand each other perfectly,” Helen continued, confidently, “and that means so much to a girl. One of the first things I told him, after we became engaged, was that if our affection stood for anything it must stand for everything. If at any time while we were engaged, or even after we were married, he felt that he had made a mistake in thinking me the one woman in the world for him, he was to come to me frankly and say so, and together we would plan how best to meet the situation. Suppose, for instance, that Jack met some one whom he really loved better than me. It would be an awful experience, but how much less of a tragedy to recognize the fact than to live on, a hollow, miserable existence, such as we see in so many instances around us.”
“And he has not confessed to you yet?”
“Not yet,” Helen laughed, “and we shall have been married six weeks to-morrow. That is a pretty good start, is it not?”
“But how about yourself—have you the same privilege?”
“Of course; but that is not important, for I shall never see any one fit to ride in the same automobile with Jack.”