“Oh, why do you say that to me?” demanded Halleck, impatiently. “Am I a nervous woman, that I must be kept from unpleasant sights and disagreeable experiences? If there's anything of the man about me, you insult it! Why not be a little sorry for her?”
“I'm sorry enough for her; but I suspect that, so far, you have been the principal sufferer. She's simply accepted the fact, and survived it.”
“So much the worse, so much the worse!” groaned Halleck. “She'd better have died!”
“Well, perhaps. I dare say she thinks it will never happen again, and has dismissed the subject; while you've had it happening ever since, whenever you've thought of her.”
Halleck struck the arms of his chair with his clinched hands. “Confound the fellow! What business has he to come back into my way, and make me think about his wife? Oh, very likely it's quite as you say! I dare say she's stupidly content with him; that she's forgiven it and forgotten all about it. Probably she's told him how I behaved, and they've laughed me over together. But does that make it any easier to bear?”
“It ought,” said Atherton. “What did the husband do when you met them?”
“Everything but tip me the wink,—everything but say, in so many words, 'You see I've made it all right with her: don't you wish you knew—how?'” Halleck dropped his head, with a wrathful groan.
“I fancy,” said Atherton, thoughtfully, “that, if we really knew how, it would surprise us. Married life is as much a mystery to us outsiders as the life to come, almost. The ordinary motives don't seem to count; it's the realm of unreason. If a man only makes his wife suffer enough, she finds out that she loves him so much she must forgive him. And then there's a great deal in their being bound. They can't live together in enmity, and they must live together. I dare say the offence had merely worn itself out between them.”
“Oh, I dare say,” Halleck assented, wearily. “That isn't my idea of marriage, though.”
“It's not mine, either,” returned Atherton. “The question is whether it isn't often the fact in regard to such people's marriages.”