Peg O' My Heart Part 29

"No man could!" said Brent, insinuatingly.

She looked at him coldly a moment.

"Let me see--where were you? Just married, weren't you? Go on."

"Then came the baby!" He said that with a significant meaning and paused to see the effect on Ethel. If it had any, Ethel effectually concealed it. Her only comment was:

"Ah!"

Brent went on:

"One would think THAT would change things. But no. Neither of us wanted her. Neither of us love her. Children should come of love--not hate.

And she is a child of hate." He paused, looking intently at Ethel. She looked understandingly at him, then dropped her eyes.

Brent went on as if following up an advantage: "She sits in her little chair, her small, wrinkled, old disillusioned face turned to us, with the eyes watching us accusingly. She submits to caresses as though they were distasteful: as if she knew they were lies. At times she pushes the nearing face away with her little baby fingers." He stopped, watching her eagerly. Her eyes were down.

"I shouldn't tell you this. It's terrible. I see it in your face. What are you thinking?"

"I'm sorry," replied Ethel simply.

"For me?"

"For your wife."

"MY WIFE?" he repeated, aghast.

"Yes," said Ethel. "Aren't you? No? Are you just sorry for yourself?"

Brent turned impatiently away. So this laying-open the wound in his life was nothing to Ethel. Instead of pity for him all it engendered in her was sorrow for his wife.

How little women understood him.

There was a pathetic catch in his voice as he turned to Ethel and said reproachfully:

"You think me purely selfish?"

"Naturally," she answered quickly. "_I_ AM. Why, not be truthful about ourselves sometimes? Eh?"

"We quarrelled last night--about you!" he said, desperately.

"Really?"

"Gossip has linked us together. My wife has heard and put the worst construction on it."

"Well?"

"We said things to each other last night that can never be forgiven or forgotten. I left the house and walked the streets--hours! I looked my whole life back and through as though it were some stranger's" He turned abruptly away to the windows and stayed a moment, looking down the drive.

Ethel said nothing.

He came back to her in a few moments. "I tell you we ought to be taught--we ought to be taught, when we are young, what marriage really means, just as we are taught not to steal, nor lie, nor sin. In, marriage we do all three--when we're ill-mated. We steal affection from some one else, we lie in our lives and we sin in our relations.h.i.+p."

Ethel asked him very quietly:

"Do you mean that you are a sinner, a thief, and a liar?"

Brent looked at her in horror.

"Oh, take some of the blame," said Ethel; "don't put it all on the woman."

"You've never spoken to me like this before."

"I've often wanted to," replied Ethel. Then she asked him: "What do you intend doing?"

"Separate," he answered, eagerly. "You don't doctor a poisoned limb when your life depends on it; you cut it off. When two lives generate a deadly poison, face the problem as a surgeon would. Amputate."

"And after the operation? What then?" asked Ethel.

"That is why I am here facing you. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Oh, dear, yes. Perfectly. I have been waiting for you to get to the point."

"Ethel!" and he impulsively stretched out his arms as though to embrace her.

She drew back slightly, just out of his reach.

"Wait." She looked up at him, quizzically: "Suppose we generate poison?

What would you do? Amputate me?"

"You are different from all other women."

"Didn't you tell your wife that when you asked her to marry you?"

He turned away impatiently: "Don't say those things, Ethel, they hurt."

"I'm afraid, Christian, I'm too frank, aren't I?"

"You stand alone, Ethel. You seem to look into the hearts of people and know why and how they beat."

"I do--sometimes. It's an awkward faculty."

He looked at her glowingly: "How marvellously different two women can be! You--my wife."

Ethel shook her head and smiled her calm, dead smile "We're not really very different, Christian. Only some natures like change. Yours does.

And the new have all the virtues. Why, I might not last as long as your wife did."

"Don't say that. We lave a common bond--UNDERSTANDING."

"Think so?"