They did not, at first, talk much together, and each beat a devious track about the outskirts of the subject that lay between them like a haunted wood. But every word, every action, seemed to glance at it, to draw toward it, as though a fount of healing sprang in its poisoned shade. If only they might cut away through the thicket to that restoring spring!
Glennard, watching his wife with the intentness of a wanderer to whom no natural sign is negligible, saw that she had taken temporary refuge in the purpose of renouncing the money. If both, theoretically, owned the inefficacy of such amends, the woman’s instinctive subjectiveness made her find relief in this crude form of penance. Glennard saw that she meant to live as frugally as possible till what she deemed their debt was discharged; and he prayed she might not discover how far-reaching, in its merely material sense, was the obligation she thus hoped to acquit. Her mind was fixed on the sum originally paid for the letters, and this he knew he could lay aside in a year or two. He was touched, meanwhile, by the spirit that made her discard the petty luxuries which she regarded as the signs of their bondage. Their shared renunciations drew her nearer to him, helped, in their evidence of her helplessness, to restore the full protecting stature of his love. And still they did not speak.
It was several weeks later that, one afternoon by the drawing-room fire, she handed him a letter that she had been reading when he entered.
“I’ve heard from Mr. Flamel,” she said.
Glennard turned pale. It was as though a latent presence had suddenly become visible to both. He took the letter mechanically.
“It’s from Smyrna,” she said. “Won’t you read it?”
He handed it back. “You can tell me about it–his hand’s so illegible.” He wandered to the other end of the room and then turned and stood before her. “I’ve been thinking of writing to Flamel,” he said.
She looked up.
“There’s one point,” he continued, slowly, “that I ought to clear up. I told him you’d known about the letters all along; for a long time, at least; and I saw it hurt him horribly. It was just what I meant to do, of course; but I can’t leave him to that false impression; I must write him.”
She received this without outward movement, but he saw that the depths were stirred. At length she returned, in a hesitating tone, “Why do you call it a false impression? I did know.”
“Yes, but I implied you didn’t care.”
“Ah!”
He still stood looking down on her. “Don’t you want me to set that right?” he tentatively pursued.
She lifted her head and fixed him bravely. “It isn’t necessary,” she said.
Glennard flushed with the shock of the retort; then, with a gesture of comprehension, “No,” he said, “with you it couldn’t be; but I might still set myself right.”
She looked at him gently. “Don’t I,” she murmured, “do that?”
“In being yourself merely? Alas, the rehabilitation’s too complete! You make me seem–to myself even–what I’m not; what I can never be. I can’t, at times, defend myself from the delusion; but I can at least enlighten others.”
The flood was loosened, and kneeling by her he caught her hands. “Don’t you see that it’s become an obsession with me? That if I could strip myself down to the last lie–only there’d always be another one left under it!–and do penance naked in the market- place, I should at least have the relief of easing one anguish by another? Don’t you see that the worst of my torture is the impossibility of such amends?”
Her hands lay in his without returning pressure. “Ah, poor woman, poor woman,” he heard her sigh.
“Don’t pity her, pity me! What have I done to her or to you, after all? You’re both inaccessible! It was myself I sold.”
He took an abrupt turn away from her; then halted before her again. “How much longer,” he burst out, “do you suppose you can stand it? You’ve been magnificent, you’ve been inspired, but what’s the use? You can’t wipe out the ignominy of it. It’s miserable for you and it does HER no good!”