"I can't see why you want to leave me," I said at last, though with a
full sense of the inadequacy of the remark, and a suspicion of its
hypocrisy.
"That isn't quite true," she answered. "In the first place, you don't
need me. I am not of the slightest use in your life, I haven't been a
factor in it for years. You ought never to have married me,--it was all a
terrible mistake. I began to realize that after we had been married a few
months--even when we were on our wedding trip. But I was too
inexperienced--perhaps too weak to acknowledge it to myself. In the last
few years I have come to see it plainly. I should have been a fool if I
hadn't. I am not your wife in any real sense of the word, I cannot hold
you, I cannot even interest you. It's a situation that no woman with
self-respect can endure."
"Aren't those rather modern sentiments, for you, Maude?" I said.
She flushed a little, but otherwise retained her remarkable composure.
"I don't care whether they are 'modern' or not, I only know that my
position has become impossible."
I walked to the other end of the room, and stood facing the carefully
drawn curtains of the windows; fantastically, they seemed to represent
the impasse to which my mind had come. Did she intend, ultimately, to get
a divorce? I dared not ask her. The word rang horribly in my ears, though
unpronounced; and I knew then that I lacked her courage, and the
knowledge was part of my agony.