PAGE 16
The Return
by
“What the devil am I to do now?”
He was still again. She seemed to understand, and moved to the door firmly.
“It’s very simple–I’m going,” she said aloud.
At the sound of her voice he gave a start of surprise, looked at her wildly, and asked in a piercing tone–
“You. . . . Where? To him?”
“No–alone–good-bye.”
The door-handle rattled under her groping hand as though she had been trying to get out of some dark place.
“No–stay!” he cried.
She heard him faintly. He saw her shoulder touch the lintel of the door. She swayed as if dazed. There was less than a second of suspense while they both felt as if poised on the very edge of moral annihilation, ready to fall into some devouring nowhere. Then, almost simultaneously, he shouted, “Come back!” and she let go the handle of the door. She turned round in peaceful desperation like one who deliberately has thrown away the last chance of life; and, for a moment, the room she faced appeared terrible, and dark, and safe–like a grave.
He said, very hoarse and abrupt: “It can’t end like this. . . . Sit down;” and while she crossed the room again to the low-backed chair before the dressing-table, he opened the door and put his head out to look and listen. The house was quiet. He came back pacified, and asked–
“Do you speak the truth?”
She nodded.
“You have lived a lie, though,” he said, suspiciously.
“Ah! You made it so easy,” she answered.
“You reproach me–me!”
“How could I?” she said; “I would have you no other–now.”
“What do you mean by . . .” he began, then checked himself, and without waiting for an answer went on, “I won’t ask any questions. Is this letter the worst of it?”
She had a nervous movement of her hands.
“I must have a plain answer,” he said, hotly.
“Then, no! The worst is my coming back.”
There followed a period of dead silence, during which they exchanged searching glances.
He said authoritatively–
“You don’t know what you are saying. Your mind is unhinged. You are beside yourself, or you would not say such things. You can’t control yourself. Even in your remorse . . .” He paused a moment, then said with a doctoral air: “Self-restraint is everything in life, you know. It’s happiness, it’s dignity . . . it’s everything.”
She was pulling nervously at her handkerchief while he went on watching anxiously to see the effect of his words. Nothing satisfactory happened. Only, as he began to speak again, she covered her face with both her hands.
“You see where the want of self-restraint leads to. Pain–humiliation–loss of respect–of friends, of everything that ennobles life, that . . . All kinds of horrors,” he concluded, abruptly.
She made no stir. He looked at her pensively for some time as though he had been concentrating the melancholy thoughts evoked by the sight of that abased woman. His eyes became fixed and dull. He was profoundly penetrated by the solemnity of the moment; he felt deeply the greatness of the occasion. And more than ever the walls of his house seemed to enclose the sacredness of ideals to which he was about to offer a magnificent sacrifice. He was the high priest of that temple, the severe guardian of formulas, of rites, of the pure ceremonial concealing the black doubts of life. And he was not alone. Other men, too–the best of them–kept watch and ward by the hearthstones that were the altars of that profitable persuasion. He understood confusedly that he was part of an immense and beneficent power, which had a reward ready for every discretion. He dwelt within the invincible wisdom of silence; he was protected by an indestructible faith that would last forever, that would withstand unshaken all the assaults–the loud execrations of apostates, and the secret weariness of its confessors! He was in league with a universe of untold advantages. He represented the moral strength of a beautiful reticence that could vanquish all the deplorable crudities of life–fear, disaster, sin–even death itself. It seemed to him he was on the point of sweeping triumphantly away all the illusory mysteries of existence. It was simplicity itself.