"It is Christmas," explained my friend lightly. "And we always like to be jolly, you know. When is Mr. Carville due?"
A swift shadow crossed her face and was gone.
"How can I know?" she replied. "Perhaps next week, perhaps ... but I do not know."
"I was just saying," said Bill hurriedly, "what a pity he couldn't have got in for Christmas."
"Never," said Mrs. Carville, watching the children eating chocolates. "Never can he get in for Christmas. Every year it is the same since we are married. Always, always at sea."
She looked around at us vaguely, as though she feared, somehow, that we did not believe, or understand her. But I think we did. I think we saw suddenly the secret of this lonely woman's soul. We saw it as she looked round at us, the immediate and precipitous chasm between such a life as she led, and the life of one like my friend, ever close to her husband, understanding his whims, his fears, his hopes, his follies and his victories. We saw the desolation of the sea-wife, the long lonely nights, the ever-present apprehension of loss. We understood the pathos of the scaldino. And swift upon this new interpretation we saw the great dangers of such a life to a woman of imperfect culture, strong passion and yet noble aspiration. We saw, too, another and more particular tragedy possible to her, in being forever debarred from her husband's innermost life. That vague look of distress was pregnant with meaning. She wished to say—how much! Yet in English she had not the words. For a moment there was a silence, and then once more she rose, this time to bid us adieu. We were all under an impulse, I have since learned, to press her to stay to dinner. Each was doubtful how the others would take it, and with reason, for this one feast of the year has taken on a sacramental character in recent times. We prefer, without any diminution of our Christian charity and goodwill, to eat it by ourselves. And so Mrs. Carville bade us good-bye, and was followed unwillingly by two young gentlemen who wanted to stay.
"I'll come over this evening and bring Ben and Beppo for an hour, may I?" I said.
"You must not let them be in your way," she replied. The smile of the children was reward for a good deal of inconvenience.
"Mrs. Carville, you mustn't put it that way. We shall always be glad to have them, out of business hours. And to-night is holy to children everywhere. They shall light the candles on our tree. You know what Flaubert once said of children—'a little thing like that in the house is the only thing that matters.'"
Her eyes dropped to the heads of the children in front of her, and her face became suddenly grave, set in a pose of quiet thought.