“And you--you’ve felt it too!” she broke out accusingly. “You’ve enjoyed being with these people as much as I have; you’ve let the chaplain talk to you by the hour about ‘The Reign of Law’ and Professor Drummond. When they asked you to hand the plate in church I was watching you--_you wanted to accept.”_
She stepped close, laying her hand on his arm.
“Do you know, I begin to see what marriage is for. It’s to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them--children, duties, visits, bores, relations--the things that protect married people from each other. We’ve been too close together--that has been our sin. We’ve seen the nakedness of each other’s souls.”
She sank again on the sofa, hiding her face in her hands.
Gannett stood above her perplexedly: he felt as though she were being swept away by some implacable current while he stood helpless on its bank.
At length he said, “Lydia, don’t think me a brute--but don’t you see yourself that it won’t do?”
“Yes, I see it won’t do,” she said without raising her head.
For a long time she made no answer; then she asked slowly, “Would they have us here if we were married?”
“Not if they knew--at least, not unless they could pretend not to know.”
“We shouldn’t come back here, of course; and other people needn’t know--no one need know.”
She sighed. “Then it’s only another form of deception and a meaner one. Don’t you see that?”
“I see that we’re not accountable to any Lady Susans on earth!”
“Then why are you ashamed of what we are doing here?”
“Because I’m sick of pretending that you’re my wife when you’re not--when you won’t be.”
“If I were your wife you’d have to go on pretending. You’d have to pretend that I’d never been--anything else. And our friends would have to pretend that they believed what you pretended.”
Gannett pulled off the sofa-tassel and flung it away.
“It’s not I--it’s our being together that’s impossible. I only want you to see that marriage won’t help it.”
“Your leaving me?” He sat motionless, staring at the tassel which lay at the other end of the room. At length some impulse of retaliation for the pain she was inflicting made him say deliberately: