“Then they are so many hells,” cried Halleck, “where self-respect perishes with resentment, and the husband and wife are enslaved to each other. They ought to be broken up!”
“I don't think so,” said Atherton, soberly. “The sort of men and women that marriage enslaves would be vastly more wretched and mischievous if they were set free. I believe that the hell people make for themselves isn't at all a bad place for them. It's the best place for them.”
“Oh, I know your doctrine,” said Halleck, rising. “It's horrible! How a man with any kindness in his heart can harbor such a cold-blooded philosophy I don't understand. I wish you joy of it. Good night,” he added, gloomily, taking his hat from the table. “It serves me right for coming to you with a matter that I ought to have been man enough to keep to myself.”
Atherton followed him toward the door. “It won't do you any harm to consider your perplexity in the light of my philosophy. An unhappy marriage isn't the only hell, nor the worst.”
Halleck turned. “What could be a worse hell than marriage without love?” he demanded, fiercely.
“Love without marriage,” said Atherton.
Halleck looked sharply at his friend. Then he shrugged his shoulders as he turned again and swung out of the door. “You're too esoteric for me. It's quite time I was gone.”
The way through Clover Street was not the shortest way home; but he climbed the hill and passed the little house. He wished to rehabilitate in its pathetic beauty the image which his friend's conjectures had jarred, distorted, insulted; and he lingered for a moment before the door where this vision had claimed his pity for anguish that no after serenity could repudiate. The silence in which the house was wrapped was like another fold of the mystery which involved him. The night wind rose in a sudden gust, and made the neighboring lamp flare, and his shadow wavered across the pavement like the figure of a drunken man. This, and not that other, was the image which he saw.