"Stop, Mr. Oldmeadow," said Adrienne, again. She rose as she spoke. As he saw her stand before them, her approaching maternity dominated for a moment all his impressions of her. Veiled and masked adroitly as it was, its very uncouthness curiously became her. Her head, for once, looked small. Like an archaic statue, straight and short and thick, her altered form had dignity and amplitude and her face, heavy with its menace, hard with its control, might have been that of some austere and threatening priestess of fruitfulness.
"Barney, wait," she said. Her arms hung straight beside her, but she slightly lifted a hand as she spoke and Oldmeadow noted that it was tightly clenched. "It is I, not your friend, whom you must question as to what it is right that you should do. I do not consent to his reading of my unwisdom and unworthiness. I ask you not to consent to it. I ask you again not to go. I ask you again to respect my judgment rather than his."
"Darling," the unfortunate husband supplicated; "it's not because it's Roger's judgment. You know it's what I felt right myself--from the moment you told me what had happened. You say people must follow their own light. It _is_ my light. I must do what Mother asks and try to bring Meg back."
"It is not your light, Barney. It is craft and caution and fear. More than that, do you not see, must I make plain to you what it is you do to me in going? You insult me. You treat what I have believed right for Meg to do as a crime from which she must be rescued. You drag me in the dust with her. Understand me, Barney"--the streaks of colour deepened on her neck, her breath came thickly--"if you go, you drag me in the dust."
"How can it drag you in the dust, Mrs. Barney, if Meg wants to come back?" Oldmeadow interposed in the tone of a caustic doctor addressing a malingering patient. "We're not talking of crimes; only of follies. Come; be reasonable. Don't make it so painful for Barney to do what's his plain duty. You're not a child. You have, I hope, courage enough and humour enough to own that you can make mistakes--like other people."
"Yes, yes, Adrienne, that's just it," broke painfully from Barney, and, as he seized the clue thus presented to him, Adrienne turned her head slowly, with an ominous stillness, and again rested her eyes upon him. "It's childish, you know, darling. It's not like you. And of course I understand why; and Roger does. You're not yourself; you're over-strained and off-balance and I'm so frightfully sorry all this has fallen upon you at such a time. I don't want to oppose you in anything, darling--do try to believe me. Only you must give me the credit for my own convictions. I do feel I must go. I do feel Roger must take that message to Mother. After all, darling," and now in no need of helping clues he found his own and the irrepressible note of grief vibrated in his voice, "you do owe me something, don't you? You do owe us all something--to make up, I mean. Because, without you, Meg would never have behaved like this and disgraced us all. Oh--I don't mean to reproach you!"