"Yes. I'm afraid so, but it doesn't seem to go to his head. Oh," she
said, "it wrings my heart, but I haven't the right to say anything."
"Lucy," I said, "have you thought out anything since I saw you last?"
"I think in circles," she said; "one minute I'm for doing my duty to
him, the next minute I can only think of myself. It _can't_ be right
for me to be his wife when I've stopped being--Oh, anything but awfully
fond of him."
"You _are_ that?"
"Of course I am."
"It's just about the saddest thing that ever came to my knowledge," I
said; "and you won't be angry if I say that I think you ought to stick
to him and make the best of it?"
"You're not a woman. No man understands a woman's feeling of
degradation at belonging to a man she doesn't love. Oh, it's an
impossible situation. And I can't see any way out. I _couldn't_ take
money from John, if I left him; I haven't got a penny of my own. And I
think it would kill me to go away from Jock and Hurry for long. And
the other thing would just kill me."
"That," I said, "Lucy, I don't believe."
"You don't know. Not being a woman, you _can't_ know."
"Men," I said, "and women too survive all sorts of things, mental and
physical, that they think _can't be_ survived. I read up the Spanish
Inquisition once for a college essay, and the things they did to people
were so bad that I was ashamed to put them in, and yet lots of those
people survived and lived usefully to ripe old ages."
"Who did?"
Unheard by us, John had finished in the dining-room and had come to pay
us a flying visit.
"People that were tortured by the Spanish Inquisition," I said.
"A lot they know about torture," said he. "They only did things to
people that the same people could imagine doing back to them. Nothing
is real torture if you can see your way to revenge it--if only in
imagination. Torture is what you get through no fault of your own from
somebody you'd not torture back for anything in the world. It's what
sons do to mothers, husbands to wives, wives to husbands. Isn't that
so, Lucy?"
"I suppose so," she said very quietly, her head bent close to her work.
"But what," exclaimed John, "has all this to do with the high cost of
living?"
He would neither sit down nor stand still. He moved here and there,
changing the positions of framed photographs and ash trays, lighting
cigarettes, and throwing them into the fire. He had the pinched,
hungry look of a man who is not sleeping well, and whose temperature is
a little higher than normal.
"Were you in the Spanish War?" he asked me suddenly.
(At the moment I was thinking: "If you go on like this you'll never win
her back, you'll only make matters worse!") I said: "In a way, but I
didn't see any fighting. I got mixed up in the Porto Rico campaign."
"I was with the Rough Riders," he said; "I've just been remembering
what fun it all was. I wish you could go to a war whenever you wanted
to, the way you can to a ball game."
Then as quickly as he had introduced war, he switched to a new subject.
"I want you to try some old Bourbon a man sent me."
He had crossed the room, quick as thought, and pushed a bell; when the
waitress came he told her to bring a tray.
"Isn't whiskey bad for you when you're so nervous?" said Lucy quietly,
and without looking up.
"I don't know," said John, with a certain frolicking quality in his
voice; "I'm trying to find out."
"What was that you were playing a while ago?" I asked. "The slow,
peaceful, sad sort of thing."
"This?" And he whistled a few bars.