"_Our_ family," she corrected herself; and Archer coloured. "For you'll
be my cousin soon," she continued gently.
"I hope so."
"And you take their view?"
He stood up at this, wandered across the room, stared with void eyes
at one of the pictures against the old red damask, and came back
irresolutely to her side. How could he say: "Yes, if what your husband
hints is true, or if you've no way of disproving it?"
"Sincerely--" she interjected, as he was about to speak.
He looked down into the fire. "Sincerely, then--what should you gain
that would compensate for the possibility--the certainty--of a lot of
beastly talk?"
"But my freedom--is that nothing?"
It flashed across him at that instant that the charge in the letter was
true, and that she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt. How was
he to tell her that, if she really cherished such a plan, the laws of
the State were inexorably opposed to it? The mere suspicion that the
thought was in her mind made him feel harshly and impatiently toward
her. "But aren't you as free as air as it is?" he returned. "Who can
touch you? Mr. Letterblair tells me the financial question has been
settled--"
"Oh, yes," she said indifferently.
"Well, then: is it worth while to risk what may be infinitely
disagreeable and painful? Think of the newspapers--their vileness! It's
all stupid and narrow and unjust--but one can't make over society."
"No," she acquiesced; and her tone was so faint and desolate that he
felt a sudden remorse for his own hard thoughts.
"The individual, in such cases, is nearly always sacrificed to what is
supposed to be the collective interest: people cling to any convention
that keeps the family together--protects the children, if there are
any," he rambled on, pouring out all the stock phrases that rose to his
lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her
silence seemed to have laid bare. Since she would not or could not say
the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let
her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on
the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a
wound he could not heal.
"It's my business, you know," he went on, "to help you to see these
things as the people who are fondest of you see them. The Mingotts, the
Wellands, the van der Luydens, all your friends and relations: if I
didn't show you honestly how they judge such questions, it wouldn't be
fair of me, would it?" He spoke insistently, almost pleading with her
in his eagerness to cover up that yawning silence.