"If you have seen Louisa, she has been talking to you, no doubt," he said, after another little pause, with again the glimmer of a smile. "We have fallen upon troubles, and we don't understand each other, Frank. That's all very natural; she does not see things from my point of view: I could not expect she should. If I could see from hers, it might be easier for us all; but that is still less to be expected; and it is hard upon her, Frank--very hard," said Gerald, turning round in his old ingenuous way, with that faculty for seeing other people's difficulties which was so strong a point in his character. "She is called upon to make, after all, perhaps, the greater sacrifice of the two; and she does not see any duty in it--the reverse, indeed. She thinks it a sin. It is a strange view of life, to look at it from Louisa's point. Here will be an unwilling, unintentional martyrdom; and it is hard to think I should take all the merit, and leave my poor little wife the suffering without any compensation!" He began to walk up and down the room with uneasy steps, as if the thought was painful, and had to be got rid of by some sudden movement. "It must be that God reckons with women for what they have endured, as with men for what they have done," said Gerald. He spoke with a kind of grieved certainty, which made his brother feel, to start with, the hopelessness of all argument.
"But must this be? Is it necessary to take such a final, such a terrible step?" said the Perpetual Curate.
"I think so." Gerald went to the window, to resume his contemplation of the cedar, and stood there with his back turned to Frank, and his eyes going slowly over all the long processes of his self-argument, laid up as they were upon those solemn levels of shadow. "Yes--you have gone so far with me; but I don't want to take you any farther, Frank. Perhaps, when I have reached the perfect peace to which I am looking forward, I may try to induce you to share it, but at present there are so many pricks of the flesh. You did not come to argue with me, did you?" and again the half-humorous gleam of old came over Gerald's face as he looked round. "Louisa believes in arguing," he said, as he came back to the table and took his seat again; "not that she has ever gained much by it, so far as I am aware. Poor girl! she talks and talks, and fancies she is persuading me; and all the time my heart is bleeding for her. There it is!" he exclaimed, suddenly hiding his face in his hands. "This is what crushes one to think of. The rest is hard enough, Heaven knows--separation from my friends, giving up my own people, wounding and grieving, as I know I shall, everybody who loves me. I could bear that; but Louisa and her children--God help me, there's the sting!"