“Till the day after to-morrow. I am afraid I shall not have the pleasure of asking you to call on me.”
“I regret it extremely,” replied Hugh. “And now that I believe the curtain is up, I will say good-bye.”
“Won’t you sit through the act in our box?” asked Minna. “It will be difficult to get back to your--other wife.”
He turned on his heel and walked away. She looked back at him until the curve of the passage hid him from her view, and then entered her box.
With muttered apologies to disturbed stall occupants Hugh regained his place by Irene. She slipped her hand, as before, into his, and whispered a welcome. His grasp grew tight as his heart swelled within him. Oh, God, it was good to have her safe and secure! But the spell of the play had lost its power. When the curtain fell again, he was scarcely conscious of what had passed. It had fallen on a highly dramatic situation. Irene gave the little sigh of relieved tension, and turned to him, her face lit with the afterglow of kindled emotion.
“I am beside you, Renie. That is all I want in this world.”
The answer contented her. She whispered a foolish word, her head near his. Instinctively he raised his eyes to Minna’s box, and saw her staring down at him with the hard, ugly look upon her face that he had known so well in days past.
“I am afraid that poor girl is not happy,” said Irene, following his glance. “Isn’t it strange, Hugh dear, that from the very first, I always wanted to lighten her lot? What a meddlesome creature she would think me if she knew!”
She drove knives into the man. In what estimation would she hold him, if he told her his and that girl’s story? He was no hero in his own eyes; in hers he day by day perceived, with an indescribable mingling of pain and pride, that he was. It was her nature to exalt any one she loved on a pinnacle of greatness. He had married her, allowing her to remain in ignorance, honestly, according to his lights; for the sake of her welfare alone. Now, for the first time, he trembled for himself.
“Don’t be sad, dear,” she said after awhile. “I can look back on it all so calmly--as if it had happened in a prior state of existence. And so must you.”
“Love is the god that works all healing,” he replied. And the sincerity of his faith comforted him.