Alarm was driven from his face by a chaos of emotions. He flushed darkly, his eyes on his plate. “You oughtn’t to have to be worrying about such things.”
“Oh, I won’t mind if it does happen,” she said quickly. “In a way, I’d be glad. I’d be out of business anyway; I’d find something else to do. Nobody knows how I hate business—nothing but an exploiting of stupid people by people just a little less stupid.”
She caught at the impersonality of the subject, trying to control the intoxication that rose in her again, fed by his silence, by the currents it set vibrating between them once more. She threw her words into it as if their hard-matter-of-factness would break a growing spell.
“Six-tenths of our business can be wiped out without doing any harm. A real-estate salesman hasn’t any real reason for existing. We’re just a barrier between the land and the people who want it. We aren’t needed a bit. The people would simply take the land if they weren’t like horses, too stupid to know their own strength, letting us grow fat on their labor. Hoffman, owning the land and making a hundred percent on its sale; Clark & Hayward, with their fifty percent expenses and commissions; me, with my fifteen percent, and the salesman under me—we’re just a lot of parasites living off the land without giving anything in return. Oh, don’t think I don’t know how useless these last three years—”
She knew he was not listening. Nothing she was saying set his cup chattering against the saucer as he put it down. The twilight was prolonged by the first radiance of a rising moon, and in the strange, silver-gray light the white passion flowers, the green spray of the pepper-tree on the lawn, took on an unearthly quality, like beauty in a dream. Her voice wavered into silence. Through a haze she became aware that he was about to speak. Her own words forestalled him, still pleasantly commonplace.
“It’s getting dark, isn’t it? Let’s go in and light the lamps.”
His footsteps followed her through the ghostly dimness of the house. The floor seemed far beneath her feet, and through her quivering emotions shot a gleam of amusement. She was feeling like a girl in her teens! Her hand sought the electric light-switch as it might have clutched at a lifeline.
“Helen, wait a minute!” She started, stopped, her arm outstretched toward the wall “I’ve got to say something.”
The tortured determination of his voice told her that the coming moment could not be evaded. A cool, accustomed steadiness of nerves and brain rose to meet it. She crossed the room, and switched on the tiny desk-lamp, the golden-shaded light of which only warmed the dusk. But her opened lips made no sound; she indicated the big, leather chair only with a gesture, settling herself on the cushioned window-seat. He remained standing, his hands in his coat-pockets, his gaze on the fingers interlaced on her knees.
“You’re a married woman.”
A shock ran through her. She had worn those old bonds so long without feeling them that she had forgotten they were there. Why—why, she was herself, H. D. Kennedy, salesman, office-manager, householder.
His voice went on stubbornly, hoarse.
“I haven’t got any right to talk this way. But, Helen, what are you going to do? Don’t you see I’ve got to know? Don’t you see I can’t go on? It isn’t fair.” He faltered, dragging out the words as though by muscular effort. “It isn’t fair to—him. Or me or you. Helen, if—if things do go to pieces, as you said—can’t you see I’ll—just have to be in a position to do something?”
The tremulous intoxication was gone. Her composed self-possession of the moment before seemed a cheap, smug attitude. She saw a naked, tortured soul, and the stillness of the room was reflected in the stillness within her.
“What do you want me to do?” she said at last.
He walked to the cold hearth and stood looking down at the piled sticks. His voice, coming from the shadows, sounded as though muffled by them. “Tell me—do you still care about him?”
All the wasted love and broken hopes, the muddied, miserable tangle of living, swept over her, the suffering that had been buried by many days, the memories she had locked away and smothered, Bert, and all that he had been to her. And now she could not remember his face. She could not see him clearly in her mind; she did not know where he was. When had she thought of him last?
“No,” she said.
“Then—can’t you?”
“Divorce, you mean?”
Paul came back to her, and she saw that he was even more shaken than she. He spoke thickly, painfully. He had never thought that he would do such a thing. God knew, he said without irreverence, that he did not believe in divorce. Not usually. But in this case—He had never thought he could love another man’s wife. He had tried not to. But she was so alone. And he had loved her long ago. She had not forgotten that? It hadn’t been easy to keep on all these years without her. And then when she had been treated so, and he couldn’t do anything.
But it wasn’t altogether that. Not all unselfish, “I—I’ve wanted you so! You don’t know how I’ve wanted you. Nobody ever seems to think that a man wants to be loved and have somebody caring just about him, somebody that’s glad when he comes
