“Paul, you dear! Don’t worry about that at all. If I needed any help I’d ask you, truly. But I don’t.”
“Well, we might as well look at it practically,” he persisted. “It’s going to figure up maybe more than you think to keep this house going. Not that I want you to give it up if you’d rather stay here,” he parenthesized, quickly. “I’d rather have you here than in Masonville, and I’d rather have you in Ripley than here, for that matter. Say, why couldn’t you come down there? I could fix up that little bungalow on Harper Street. And everyone knows you’re an old friend of mother’s.”
“I might do something like that,” she said at random. She was troubled by the knowledge that their hour was slipping past and the conversation going in the wrong direction.
“It would cost you hardly anything to live there. And we could—”
“Yes,” she said. “I’d love that part of it. You know how I’d like to see you every minute. But there’s plenty of time. I’ll think about it, dear.”
“That’s just the point. There is so much time. A whole year and more before I can—and it would be just like you to half starve yourself and never say a word to me about it.”
“O Paul!” she laughed, “you are so funny! And I love you for it. Well, then, listen. I have a little over twelve hundred dollars in the bank. Not much, is it, to show for all the years I’ve been working? But it will keep me from growing gaunt and hollow-eyed for lack of food, quite a little while. And if I really did need more there’s a whole world full of money all around me, you know. So please don’t worry. I promise to eat and eat. I promise never to stop eating as long as I live. Regularly, three times a day, every single day!”
“All right,” he said. His cigar-end glowed red for a minute through the gathering dusk. She put her hand on his sleeve, and it moved beneath her fingers until its firm, warm grip closed over them. Palm against palm and fingers interlaced, they sat in silence. “It’s going to be a long time,” he said. After a long moment he added gruffly, “I suppose you’ve—begun the thing—seen a lawyer?”
“I’m going to, this week. I—hate to—somehow. It’s so—”
“You poor dear! I wish to heaven you didn’t have to go through it. But I suppose it won’t be—there won’t be any trouble. Tell me, Helen, honestly. You do want to do it? You aren’t keeping—anything from me?”
“No. I do want to. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you. He’s come back.” He was instantly so still that his immobility was more startling than a cry. At the faint relaxing of his hand, her own fled, and clenched on the arm of her chair. Quietly, in a voice that was stiff from being held steady, she told him something of her interview with Bert. “I thought you ought to know. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”
“I’m glad you told me. But—don’t let’s ever speak of him again.” His gesture of repugnance flung the cigar in a glowing arc over the porch railing, and it lay a red coal in the grass.
“I don’t want to.” She rose to face him, putting her hands on his shoulders. “But, Paul, I want you to understand. He never was anything to me, really. Nothing real, I mean. It was just because I was a foolish girl and lonely and tired of working—and I didn’t understand. We never were really married.” She stumbled among inadequate words, trying to make him feel what she felt. “There wasn’t any reality between us, any real love, nothing solid to build a marriage on. And I think there is between you and me.”
“The only thing I want,” he said, his arms around her, “the only thing I want in the world is just to take you home and take care of you.”
She kissed him, a hushed solemnity in her heart. He was so good, so fine and strong. With all her soul she longed to be worthy of him, to make him happy, to be able to build with him a serene and beautiful life.
The days went by with surprising slowness. In the mornings, waking with the first twittering of the birds in the vines over the sleeping porch, she started upright, to relax again on the pillows and stretch luxuriously between the cool sheets, with delicious realization that the whole, long day was hers. But her body, filled with energy, rebelled at inaction. She rose, busying her mind with small plans while she dressed and breakfasted. At ten o’clock she could think of nothing more to do to the house or the garden, and still time stretched before her, prolonged indefinitely, empty.
The house, lamentably failing as an occupation, became a prison. She escaped from it to the streets. She shopped leisurely, comparing colors and fabrics and prices, seeking the bargains she had been obliged to forego while she was working. An afternoon spent in this way might save her a dollar, and her business sense grinned at her sardonically. She might meet an acquaintance, a woman who lived near her, and over ices elaborately disguised with syrups and nuts they could talk of the movies, the weather, the stupidities of servants. Time had become an adversary to be destroyed as pleasantly as possible. In the long, lazy afternoons she sat on a neighboring porch, listening to talk about details, magnified, distorted, handled over and over again, and while her fingers were busy at an embroidery hoop, stitching bits of thread back and forth through bits of cloth,
