“No. Not at all—what is it?”
“I don’t wish to be unkind to you, Yvonne. I am only speaking from a sense of duty. Once said, it will be, I am sure, enough.”
“But what is it? What is it?” she repeated piteously. “What have I done to displease you?”
He took up his parable, with crossed legs and joined finger tips, and in a quiet, unemotional voice catalogued her failings. She was not sufficiently alive to the deeper responsibilities of her position. Many parochial duties that devolved upon the Rector’s wife, she had left undone. She took no pains to improve her acquaintance with doctrinal and ecclesiastical affairs.
“I am not exaggerating,” he said, “for you did tell the Sunday-school children that St. John the Baptist was present at the Crucifixion, Yvonne, did n’t you?”
He smiled, as if to soften the severity of his charges; but Yvonne’s face was fixed in tragic dismay, and the tears were rolling down her cheeks.
He rose and advanced to her with outstretched arms. She obeyed his suggestion mechanically and allowed herself to stand in his embrace.
“It is best to say it all out at once, Yvonne,” he said gently. “And you will think over it, I know. You must n’t be hurt, little wife.”
But she was—to the depths of her heart. “I did n’t know you were not pleased with me,” she said with trembling lip. “I thought I was doing my very best to make you happy.”
“And you have, my child—very happy.”