“Yes, yes, I know; but I can't think,—I don't seem to remember. Didn't I give it up once? Didn't I say that I would rather go home, and let Bartley get the divorce, if he wanted?”
“Yes, you said that, Marcia.”
“I used to make him very unhappy; I was very strict with him, when I knew he couldn't bear any kind of strictness. And he was always so patient with me; though he never really cared for me. Oh, yes, I knew that from the first! He used to try; but he must have been glad to get away. Poor Bartley! It was cruel, cruel, to put that in about my abandoning him when he knew I would come back; but perhaps the lawyers told him he must; he had to put in something! Why shouldn't I let him go? Father said he only wanted to get rid of me, so that he could marry some one else—Yes, yes; it was that that made me start! Father knew it would! Oh,” she grieved, with a wild self-pity that tore Halleck's heart, “he knew it would!” She fell wearily back against the seat, and did not speak for some minutes. Then she said, in a slow, broken utterance: “But now I don't seem to mind even that, any more. Why shouldn't he marry some one else that he really likes, if he doesn't care for me?”
Halleck laughed in bitterness of soul as his thought recurred to Atherton's reasons. “Because,” he said, “you have a public duty in the matter. You must keep him bound to you, for fear some other woman, whose husband doesn't care for her, should let him go, too, and society be broken up, and civilization destroyed. In a matter like this, which seems to concern yourself alone, you are only to regard others.”
His reckless irony did not reach her through her manifold sorrow. “Well,” she said, simply, “it must be that. But, oh! how can I bear it! how can I bear it!”
The time passed; Olive did not return for an hour; then she merely said that the little girl had just fallen asleep, and that she should go back and lie down with her; that she was sleepy too.
Marcia did not answer, but Halleck said he would call her in good time before they reached Indianapolis.
The porter made up the berths of such as were going through to St. Louis, and Marcia was left sitting alone with Halleck. “I will go and get your father to come here,” he said.
“I don't want him to come! I want to talk to you—to say something—What was it? I can't think!” She stopped, like one trying to recover a faded thought; he waited, but she did not speak again. She had laid a nervous clutch upon his arm, to detain him from going for her father, and she kept her hand there mechanically; but after a while he felt it relax; she drooped against him, and fell away into a sleep in which she started now and then like a frightened child. He could not release himself without waking her; but it did not matter; her sorrow had unsexed her; only the tenderness of his love for this hapless soul remained in his heart, which ached and evermore heavily sank within him.
He woke her at last when he must go to tell Olive that they were running into Indianapolis. Marcia struggled to her feet: “Oh, oh! Are we there? Are we there?”