"More in this way," said the measured voice, that had lost no shade of
its self-control. "I understand that Edith feels she has made a
mistake--that you've both made a mistake--"
[Illustration: Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her.
"Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England."]
"I never said so," she interrupted, hurriedly.
Lacon smiled, as nearly as his saddened face could smile. "I didn't say
you said so," he corrected, gently. "I said I understood. There's a
difference. And, since I do understand, I feel it right to offer you--to
offer you both--"
Exhaustion compelled her to drop into a seat. "What are you going to
say?"
"Nothing that can hurt you, I hope--or--or Mr. Walker, either. Suppose
we all sit down?"
He followed his own suggestion with a dignity almost serene. Chip took
mechanically the seat from which he had just risen. It offered him the
resource of looking more directly at the range of glistening peaks than
at either of his two companions.
"The point for our consideration is this," Lacon resumed, as calmly as
if he were taking part in a meeting at the Bundespalast. "Admitting that
you've both made a mistake, is there any possibility of retracing your
steps?--or must you go on paying the penalty?"
Chip spoke without turning his eyes from the mountains: "What do you
mean by--the penalty?"
"I suppose I mean the necessity of making four people unhappy instead of
two."
"That is," Chip went on, "there are two who must be unhappy in any
case."
"Precisely. There are two for whom there's _no_ escape. Whatever happens
now, nothing can save _them_. But, since that is so, the question arises
whether it wouldn't be, let us say, a greater economy of human material
if the other two--"
Edith looked mystified. "I don't know what you mean. Which are the two
who must be unhappy in any case?"
Chip answered quietly, without turning his head: "He's one; my--my wife
is the other."
"Oh!" With something between a sigh and a gasp she fell back against a
pillar of the rotunda.
"It's the sort of economy of human material," Chip went on, his eye
following the lines of the Wetterhorn up and down, "that a man achieves
in saving himself from a sinking ship and leaving his wife and children
to drown--assuming that he can't rescue them."
"The comparison isn't quite exact," Lacon replied, courteously.
"Wouldn't it rather be that if a man can save only one of two women, he
nevertheless does what he can?"
Edith still looked bewildered. "I don't know what you're talking about,
either of you. What is it? Why are we here? Am I one of the two women to
be saved?"
"The suggestion is," Chip said, dryly, "that Mr. Lacon wouldn't oppose
your divorcing him, while my--my present wife might divorce me; after
which you and I could marry again. Isn't that it, sir?"
The older man nodded assent. "It's well to use plain English when we
can."
Chip continued to measure the Wetterhorn with his eye. "Rather comic the
whole thing would be, wouldn't it?"
"Possibly," Lacon replied, imperturbably. "But we've accepted the comic
in the institution of marriage, we Americans. It's too late for us to
attempt to take it without its possibilities of opera bouffe."
"But aren't there laws?" Edith asked.
Again Lacon's lips glimmered with the ghost of a smile. "Yes; but
they're very complacent laws. They reduce marriage to the legal
permission for two persons to live together as man and wife as long as
mutually agreeable; but the license is easily rescinded--and renewed."
"But surely marriage is more than that," she protested.
Lacon's ghost of a smile persisted. "Haven't we proved that it
isn't?--for us, at any rate. Hesitation to use our freedom in the future
would only stultify our action in the past. If we go in for an
institution with qualities of opera bouffe isn't it well to do it
light-heartedly?--or as light-heartedly as we can."
Edith looked at him reproachfully. "Should you be doing it
light-heartedly?"
"I said as light-heartedly as we can."
"What makes you think that Chip and I--I mean," she corrected, with some
confusion, "Mr. Walker and I--want to do it at all?"
"Isn't that rather evident?"
"I didn't know it was."
Chip glanced at them over his shoulder. It seemed to him that Lacon's
look was one of pity.
"You met in England," the latter said, displaying a hesitation unusual
in him, "with something--something more than pleasure, as I judge;
and--and Mr. Walker is here."
"Yes, by accident," she declared, hurriedly. "It was by accident in
England, too."
He lifted his fine white hand in protest. "Oh, I'm not blaming you. On
the contrary, nothing could be more natural than that you should both
feel as I--I imagine you do. You're the wife of his youth--he's the
husband of yours. The best things you've ever had in your two lives are
those you've had in common. That you should want to bridge over the
past, and, if possible, go back--"
"We've burned our bridges," she interrupted, quickly.
"Even burned bridges can be rebuilt if there's the will to do it. The
whole question turns on the will. If you have that I want you to
understand that I shall not be--be an obstacle to the--to the
reconstruction."
"Don't you _care_?"
"That's not the question. We've already assumed the fact that my
caring--as well as that of a certain other person whom Mr. Walker would
have to consider--is secondary. It's too late to do anything for
us--assuming that she understands, or may come to understand, the
position as I do. Your refusing happiness for yourselves in order to
stand by us, or even to stand by the children--the younger children, I
mean--wouldn't do us any good. On the contrary, as far as I'm concerned,
if there could be any such thing as mitigation--"
He broke off. Seeing the immobile features swept as by convulsion, Chip
took up the sentence: "It would be that Edith should feel free."
"Precisely."
"And her not feeling free would involve the continuance of--the
penalty."
"In its extreme form." He regained control of himself. "That the
penalty should be abrogated altogether is out of the question. Some of
us must go on paying it--all four of us, indeed, to some degree. And
yet, any relief for one would be some relief for all. Do you see what I
mean?"
The question was addressed to Edith specially.
"I'm not sure that I do," she replied, looking at him wistfully. "Is it
this?--that, assuming what you do assume, it would be easier for you if
I--I went away?"
"I shouldn't put it in just those words, I only mean that what's
hardest for you is hardest for me. I couldn't hold you to the letter of
one contract if you were keeping the spirit of another. Do you see now?"
She didn't answer at once, so that Chip intervened: "Hasn't some one
said--Shakespeare or some one--that the letter killeth? It seems to me
I've heard that."
"You probably have. Some one has said it. But He also added, as a
balancing clause, 'The Spirit giveth life.' That's the vital part of it.
To find out where the spirit is in our present situation is the question
now."