Turning from the window, he paced the floor with anguish keen as though she had gone from him for ever. What obstinacy, what unreasoning wilfulness--and what would come of it? He spent the long night brooding over his great sorrow, the root of which was the fear that his dear wife did not belong to Christ, for beloved her through all her unloveliness. "Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the church." His love had something in it of the divine pity and patience that our blessed Lord feels for his sinning, stumbling, and exasperating children.
Mrs. Eldred was not that type of womankind who spent their wrath in tears and reproaches. When she was angry, she was unapproachably so, as frigid as an iceberg. The crisis had come. Her husband had dared to command.
The next morning there was not the turn of an eyelid that could be construed into penitence. A brawling woman is but little less endurable than a perfectly silent one. You may almost as well "flee to the house-top" from one as the other. What few words were spoken by Mr. Eldred at the breakfast table received no replies.
In the course of the forenoon he went to fulfil an engagement a few miles in the country, where he was detained till late in the day. He sat in his study in the gathering twilight longing for, but not expecting, a word from his wife of contrition and conciliation. He was summoned to tea, but no wife appeared. After a little he went in search of her. She was not in the house. It was growing dark. He was perplexed and anxious. Again he went to their room, hoping to find some explanation of the strange absence. On the mantel lay a note addressed to him. As he read he gazed about to assure himself that it was not a horrible dream, half expecting his wife to gleefully spring into his arms from some hiding-place; but all was silent save his own moans of pain.
Vida had gone! Had "fled to her mother for protection from a tyrant." So the letter ran; it was in her own graceful hand; her name was affixed. It was no cruel joke. She said, moreover, that it was evident that their tastes were not congenial; it was out of the question for her to be tied down to the sort of life he expected of her; that she had borne reflections on her conduct that she had not tolerated from any other being! Tyranny was of all things most hateful to her; the climax was now reached when he ventured "_to command_."