"But people have done so. It would have been a clean sort of divorce."
"You don't understand Justin. Justin would ruin you. If you were to take
Mary away.... He's a queer little man. Everything is in his hands.
Everything always is in the husband's hands in these affairs. If he
chooses. And keeps himself in the right. For an injured husband the law
sanctifies revenge....
"And you see, you've got to take Justin's terms. He's changed. He didn't
at first fully realize. He feels--cheated. We've had to persuade him.
There's a case for Justin, you know. He's had to stand--a lot. I don't
wonder at his going stiff at last. No doubt it's hard for you to see
that. But you have to see it. You've got to go away as he
requires--three years out of England, you've got to promise not to
correspond, not to meet afterwards----"
"It's so extravagant a separation."
"The alternative is--not for you to have Mary, but for you two to be
flung into the ditch together--that's what it comes to, Stratton.
Justin's got his case. He's set like--steel. You're up against the law,
up against social tradition, up against money--any one of those a man
may fight, but not all three. And she's ill, Stratton. You owe her
consideration. You of all people. That's no got-up story; she's truly
ill and broken. She can no longer fly with you and fight with you,
travel in uncomfortable trains, stay in horrible little inns. You don't
understand. The edge is off her pluck, Stratton."
"What do you mean?" I asked, and questioned his face.
"Just exactly what I say."
A gleam of understanding came to me....
"Why can't I see her?" I broke in, with my voice full of misery and
anger. "Why can't I see her? As if seeing her once more could matter so
very greatly now!"
He appeared to weigh something in his mind. "You can't," he said.
"How do I know that she's not being told some story of my abandonment of
her? How do I know she isn't being led to believe I no longer want her
to come to me?"
"She isn't," said Tarvrille, still with that arrested judicial note in
his voice. "You had her letters?" he said.
"Two."
"Yes. Didn't they speak?"
"I want to see her. Damn it, Tarvrille!" I cried with sudden tears in
my smarting eyes. "Let _her_ send me away. This isn't---- Not treating
us like human beings."
"Women," said Tarvrille and looked at his boot toes, "are different from
men. You see, Stratton----"
He paused. "You always strike me, Stratton, as not realizing that women
are weak things. We've got to take _care_ of them. You don't seem to
feel that as I do. Their moods--fluctuate--more than ours do. If you
hold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a man--it isn't
fair...."
He halted as though he awaited my assent to that proposition.
"If you were to meet Mary now, you see, and if you were to say to her,
come--come and we'll jump down Etna together, and you said it in the
proper voice and with the proper force, she'd do it, Stratton. You know
that. Any man knows a thing like that. And she wouldn't _want_ to do
it...."
"You mean that's why I can't see her."
"That's why you can't see her."
"Because we'd become--dramatic."
"Because you'd become--romantic and uncivilized."
"Well," I said sullenly, realizing the bargain we were making, "I
won't."
"You won't make any appeal?"
"No."
He made no answer, and I looked up to discover him glancing over his
shoulder through the great glass window into the other room. I stood up
very quickly, and there in the further apartment were Guy and Mary,
standing side by side. Our eyes met, and she came forward towards the
window impulsively, and paused, with that unpitying pane between us....
Then Guy was opening the door for her and she stood in the doorway. She
was in dark furs wrapped about her, but in the instant I could see how
ill she was and how broken. She came a step or so towards me and then
stopped short, and so we stood, shyly and awkwardly under Guy and
Tarvrille's eyes, two yards apart. "You see," she said, and stopped
lamely.
"You and I," I said, "have to part, Mary. We---- We are beaten. Is that
so?"
"Stephen, there is nothing for us to do. We've offended. We broke the
rules. We have to pay."
"By parting?"
"What else is there to do?"
"No," I said. "There's nothing else." ...
"I tried," she said, "that you shouldn't be sent from England."
"That's a detail," I answered.
"But your politics--your work?"
"That does not matter. The great thing is that you are ill and
unhappy--that I can't help you. I can't do anything.... I'd go anywhere
... to save you.... All I can do, I suppose, is to part like this and
go."
"I shan't be--altogether unhappy. And I shall think of you----"
She paused, and we stood facing one another, tongue-tied. There was only
one word more to say, and neither of us would say it for a moment.
"Good-bye," she whispered at last, and then, "Don't think I deserted
you, Stephen my dear. Don't think ill of me. I couldn't come--I couldn't
come to you," and suddenly her face changed slowly and she began to
weep, my fearless playmate whom I had never seen weeping before; she
began to weep as an unhappy child might weep.
"Oh my Mary!" I cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clung
together and kissed with tear-wet faces.
"No," cried Guy belatedly, "we promised Justin!"
But Tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second's
interval put a hand on my shoulder. "Come," he said....
And so it was Mary and I parted from one another.