1The heat clung on far into the evening, penetrating with the darkness even the drawing-room where they sat—Sabine and John Pentland and old Mrs. Soames and Olivia—playing bridge for the last time, and as the evening wore on the game went more and more badly, with the old lady forgetting her cards and John Pentland being patient and Sabine sitting in a controlled and sardonic silence, with an expression on her face which said clearly, “I can endure this for to-night because to-morrow I shall escape again into the lively world.”

2Jean and Sybil sat for a time at the piano, and then fell to watching the bridge. No one spoke save to bid or to remind Mrs. Soames that it was time for her shaking hands to distribute the cards about the table. Even Olivia’s low, quiet voice sounded loud in the hot stillness of the old room.

3At nine o’clock Higgins appeared with a message for Olivia—that Mr. O’Hara was being detained in town and that if he could get away before ten he would come down and stop at Pentlands if the lights were still burning in the drawing-room. Otherwise he would not be down to ride in the morning.

4Once during a pause in the game Sabine stirred herself to say, “I haven’t asked about Anson’s book. He must be near to the end.”

5“Very near,” said Olivia. “There’s very little more to be done. Men are coming to-morrow to photograph the portraits. He’s using them to illustrate the book.”

6At eleven, when they came to the end of a rubber, Sabine said, “I’m sorry, but I must stop. I must get up early to-morrow to see about the packing.” And turning to Jean she said, “Will you drive me home? Perhaps Sybil will ride over with us for the air. You can bring her back.”

7At the sound of her voice, Olivia wanted to cry out, “No, don’t go. You mustn’t leave me now ... alone. You mustn’t go away like this!” But she managed to say quietly, in a voice which sounded far away, “Don’t stay too late, Sybil,” and mechanically, without knowing what she was doing, she began to put the cards back again in their boxes.

8She saw that Sabine went out first, and then John Pentland and old Mrs. Soames, and that Jean and Sybil remained behind until the others had gone, until John Pentland had helped the old lady gently into his motor and driven off with her. Then, looking up with a smile which somehow seemed to give her pain she said, “Well?”

9And Sybil, coming to her side, kissed her and said in a low voice, “Good-by, darling, for a little while.... I love you....” And Jean kissed her in a shy fashion on both cheeks.

10She could find nothing to say. She knew Sybil would come back, but she would be a different Sybil, a Sybil who was a woman, no longer the child who even at eighteen sometimes had the absurd trick of sitting on her mother’s knee. And she was taking away with her something that until now had belonged to Olivia, something which she could never again claim. She could find nothing to say. She could only follow them to the door, from where she saw Sabine already sitting in the motor as if nothing in the least unusual were happening; and all the while she wanted to go with them, to run away anywhere at all.

11Through a mist she saw them turning to wave to her as the motor drove off, to wave gaily and happily because they were at the beginning of life.... She stood in the doorway to watch the motor-lights slipping away in silence down the lane and over the bridge through the blackness to the door of Brook Cottage. There was something about Brook Cottage ... something that was lacking from the air of Pentlands: it was where Toby Cane and Savina Pentland had had their wanton meetings.

12In the still heat the sound of the distant surf came to her dimly across the marshes, and into her mind came absurdly words she had forgotten for years ... “The breaking waves dashed high on the stern and rockbound coast.” Against the accompaniment of the surf, the crickets and katydids (harbingers of autumn) kept up a fiddling and singing; and far away in the direction of Marblehead she watched the eye of a lighthouse winking and winking. She was aware of every sight and sound and odor of the breathless night. It might storm, she thought, before they got into Connecticut. They would be motoring all the night....

13The lights of Sabine’s motor were moving again now, away from Brook Cottage, through O’Hara’s land, on and on in the direction of the turnpike. In the deep hollow by the river they disappeared for a moment and then were to be seen once more against the black mass of the hill crowned by the town burial-ground. And then abruptly they were gone, leaving only the sound of the surf and the music of the crickets and the distant, ironically winking lighthouse.

14She kept seeing them side by side in the motor racing through the darkness, oblivious to all else in the world save their own happiness. Yes, something had gone away from her forever.... She felt a terrible, passionate envy that was like a physical pain, and all at once she knew that she was terribly alone standing in the darkness before the door of the old house.

15She was roused by the sound of Anson’s voice asking, “Is that you, Olivia?”

16“Yes.”

17“What are you doing out there?”

18“I came out for some air.”

19“Where’s Sybil?”

20For a moment she did not answer, and then quite boldly she said, “She’s ridden over with Jean to take Sabine home.”

21“You know I don’t approve of that.” He had come through the hall now and was standing near her.

22“It can’t do any harm.”

23“That’s been said before....”

24“Why are you so suspicious, Anson, of your own child?” She had no desire to argue with him. She wanted only to be left in peace, to go away to her room and lie there alone in the darkness, for she knew now that Michael was not coming.

25“Olivia,” Anson was saying, “come inside for a moment. I want to talk to you.”

26“Very well ... but please don’t be disagreeable. I’m very tired.”

27“I shan’t be disagreeable.... I only want to settle something.”

28She knew then that he meant to be very disagreeable, and she told herself that she would not listen to him; she would think of something else while he was speaking—a trick she had learned long ago. In the drawing-room she sat quietly and waited for him to begin. Standing by the mantelpiece, he appeared more tired and yellow than usual. She knew that he had worked on his book; she knew that he had poured all his vitality, all his being, into it; but as she watched him her imagination again played her the old trick of showing her Michael standing there in his place ... defiant, a little sulky, and filled with a slow, steady, inexhaustible force.

29“It’s chiefly about Sybil,” he said. “I want her to give up seeing this boy.”

30“Don’t be a martinet, Anson. Nothing was ever gained by it.”

31(She thought, “They must be almost to Salem by now.”) And aloud she added, “You’re her father, Anson; why don’t you speak?”

32“It’s better for you. I’ve no influence with her.”

33“I have spoken,” she said, thinking bitterly that he could never guess what she meant.

34“And what’s the result? Look at her, going off at this hour of the night....”

35She shrugged her shoulders, filled with a warm sense of having outwitted the enemy, for at the moment Anson seemed to her an enemy not only of herself, but of Jean and Sybil, of all that was young and alive in the world.

36“Besides,” he was saying, “she hasn’t proper respect for me ... her father. Sometimes I think it’s the ideas she got from you and from going abroad to school.”

37“What a nasty thing to say! But if you want the truth, I think it’s because you’ve never been a very good father. Sometimes I’ve thought you never wanted children. You’ve never paid much attention to them ... not even to Jack ... while he was alive. It wasn’t ever as if they were our children. You’ve always left them to me ... alone.”

38The thin neck stiffened a little and he said, “There are reasons for that. I’m a busy man.... I’ve given most of my time, not to making money, but to doing things to better the world in some way. If I’ve neglected my children it’s been for a good reason ... few men have as much on their minds. And there’s been the book to take all my energies. You’re being unjust, Olivia. You never could see me as I am.”

39“Perhaps,” said Olivia. (She wanted to say, “What difference does the book make to any one in the world? Who cares whether it is written or not?”) She knew that she must keep up her deceit, so she said, “You needn’t worry, because Sabine is going away to-morrow and Jean will go with her.” She sighed. “After that your life won’t be disturbed any longer. Nothing in the least unusual is likely to happen.”

40“And there’s this other thing,” he said, “this disloyalty of yours to me and to all the family.”

41Stiffening slightly, she asked, “What can you mean by that?”

42“You know what I mean.”

43She saw that he was putting himself in the position of a wronged husband, assuming a martyrdom of the sort which Aunt Cassie practised so effectively. He meant to be a patient, well-meaning husband and to place her in the position of a shameful woman; and slowly, with a slow, heavy anger she resolved to circumvent his trick.

44“I think, Anson, that you’re talking nonsense. I haven’t been disloyal to any one. Your father will tell you that.”

45“My father was always weak where women are concerned and now he’s beginning to grow childish. He’s so old that he’s beginning to forgive and condone anything.” And then after a silence he said, “This O’Hara. I’m not such a fool as you think, Olivia.”

46For a long time neither of them said anything, and in the end it was Olivia who spoke, striking straight into the heart of the question. She said, “Anson, would you consider letting me divorce you?”

47The effect upon him was alarming. His face turned gray, and the long, thin, oversensitive hands began to tremble. She saw that she had touched him on the rawest of places, upon his immense sense of pride and dignity. It would be unbearable for him to believe that she would want to be rid of him in order to go to another man, especially to a man whom he professed to hold in contempt, a man who had the qualities which he himself did not possess. He could only see the request as a humiliation of his own precious dignity.

48He managed to grin, trying to turn the request to mockery, and said, “Have you lost your mind?”

49“No, Anson, not for a moment. What I ask is a simple thing. It has been done before.”

50He did not answer her at once, and began to move about the room in the deepest agitation, a strange figure curiously out of place in the midst of Horace Pentland’s exotic, beautiful pictures and chairs and bibelots—as wrong in such a setting as he had been right a month or two earlier among the museum of Pentland family relics.

51“No,” he said again and again. “What you ask is preposterous! To-morrow when you are less tired you will see how ridiculous it is. No ... I couldn’t think of such a thing!”

52She made an effort to speak quietly. “Is it because you don’t want to put yourself in such a position?”

53“It has nothing to do with that. Why should you want a divorce? We are well off, content, comfortable, happy....”

54She interrupted him, asking, “Are we?”

55“What is it you expect, Olivia ... to live always in a sort of romantic glow? We’re happier than most.”

56“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think happiness has ever meant much to you, Anson. Perhaps you’re above such things as happiness and unhappiness. Perhaps you’re more fortunate than most of us. I doubt if you have ever known happiness or unhappiness, for that matter. You’ve been uncomfortable when people annoyed you and got in your way, but ... that’s all. Nothing more than that. Happiness ... I mean it in the sensible way ... has sometimes to do with delight in living, and I don’t think you’ve ever known that, even for a moment.”

57He turned toward her saying, “I’ve been an honest, God-fearing, conscientious man, and I think you’re talking nonsense!”

58“No, not for a moment.... Heaven knows I ought to know the truth of what I’ve been saying.”

59Again they reached an impasse in the conversation and again they both remained silent, disturbed perhaps and uneasy in the consciousness that between them they had destroyed something which could never be restored; and yet with Olivia there was a cold, sustained sense of balance which came to her miraculously at such times. She felt, too, that she stood with her back against a wall, fighting. At last she said, “I would even let you divorce me—if that would be easier for you. I don’t mind putting myself in the wrong.”

60Again he began to tremble. “Are you trying to tell me that....”

61“I’m not telling you anything. There hasn’t been anything at all ... but ... but I would give you grounds if you would agree.”

62He turned away from her in disgust. “That is even more impossible.... A gentleman never divorces his wife.”

63“Let’s leave the gentlemen out of it, Anson,” she said. “I’m weary of hearing what gentlemen do and do not do. I want you to act as yourself, as Anson Pentland, and not as you think you ought to act. Let’s be honest. You know you married me only because you had to marry some one ... and I ... I wasn’t actually disreputable, even, as you remind me, if my father was shanty Irish. And ... let’s be just too. I married you because I was alone and frightened and wanted to escape a horrible life with Aunt Alice.... I wanted a home. That was it, wasn’t it? We are both guilty, but that doesn’t change the reality in the least. No, I fancy you practised loving me through a sense of duty. You tried it as long as you could and you hated it always. Oh, I’ve known what was going on. I’ve been learning ever since I came to Pentlands for the first time.”

64He was regarding her now with a fixed expression of horrid fascination; he was perhaps even dazed at the sound of her voice, slowly, resolutely, tearing aside all the veils of pretense which had made their life possible for so long. He kept mumbling, “How can you talk this way? How can you say such things?”

65Slowly, terribly, she went on and on: “We’re both guilty ... and it’s been a failure, from the very start. I’ve tried to do my best and perhaps sometimes I’ve failed. I’ve tried to be a good mother ... and now that Sybil is grown and Jack ... is dead, I want a chance at freedom. I’m still young enough to want to live a little before it is too late.”

66Between his teeth he said, “Don’t be a fool, Olivia.... You’re forty years old....”

67“You needn’t remind me of that. To-morrow I shall be forty. I know it ... bitterly. But my being forty makes no difference to you. To you it would be all the same if I were seventy. But to me it makes a difference ... a great difference.” She waited a moment, and then said, “That’s the truth, Anson; and it’s the truth that interests me to-night. Let me be free, Anson.... Let me go while being free still means something.”

68Perhaps if she had thrown herself at his feet in the attitude of a wretched, shameful woman, if she had made him feel strong and noble and heroic, she would have won; but it was a thing she could not do. She could only go on being coldly reasonable.

69“And you would give up all this?” he was saying. “You’d leave Pentlands and all it stands for to marry this cheap Irishman ... a nobody, the son perhaps of an immigrant dock-laborer.”

70“He is the son of a dock-laborer,” she answered quietly. “And his mother was a housemaid. He’s told me so himself. And as to all this.... Why, Anson, it doesn’t mean anything to me ... nothing at all that I can’t give up, nothing which means very much. I’m fond of your father, Anson, and I’m fond of you when you are yourself and not talking about what a gentleman would do. But I’d give it all up ... everything ... for the sake of this other thing.”

71For a moment his lips moved silently and in agitation, as if it were impossible for him to answer things so preposterous as those his wife had just spoken. At last he was able to say, “I think you must have lost your mind, Olivia ... to even think of asking such a thing of me. You’ve lived here long enough to know how impossible it is. Some of us must make a stand in a community. There has never been a scandal, or even a divorce, in the Pentland family ... never. We’ve come to stand for something. Three hundred years of clean, moral living can’t be dashed aside so easily.... We’re in a position where others look up to us. Can’t you see that? Can’t you understand such a responsibility?”

72For a moment she had a terrible, dizzy, intoxicating sense of power, of knowing that she held the means of destroying him and all this whited structure of pride and respectability. She had only to begin by saying, “There was Savina Pentland and her lover....” The moment passed quickly and at once she knew that it was a thing she could not do. Instead, she murmured, “Ah, Anson, do you think the world really looks at us at all? Do you think it really cares what we do or don’t do? You can’t be as blind as that.”

73“I’m not blind ... only there’s such a thing as honor and tradition. We stand for something....”

74She interrupted him. “For what?”

75“For decency, for a glorious past, for stability ... for endless things ... all the things which count in a civilized community.”

76He really believed what he was saying; she knew that he must have believed it to have written all those thousands of dull, laborious words in glorification of the past.

77He went on. “No, what you ask is impossible. You knew it before you asked.... And it would be a kindness to me if you never mentioned it again.”

78He was still pale, but he had gained control of himself and his hands no longer trembled; as he talked, as his sense of virtue mounted, he even grew eloquent, and his voice took on a shade of that unction which had always colored the voice of the Apostle to the Genteel and made of him a celebrated and fashionable cleric. Perhaps for the first time since his childhood, since the days when the red-haired little Sabine had mocked his curls and velvet suits, he felt himself a strong and powerful person. There was a kind of fierce intoxication in the knowledge of his power over Olivia. In his virtuous ardor he seemed for a moment to become a positive, almost admirable person.

79At length she said quietly, “And what if I should simply go away ... without bothering about a divorce?”

80The remark shattered all his confidence once more; and she knew that she had struck at the weakest point in all his defense—the fear of a scandal. “You wouldn’t do that!” he cried. “You couldn’t—you couldn’t behave like a common prostitute!”

81“Loving one man is not behaving like a common prostitute.... I never loved any other.”

82“You couldn’t bring such a disgrace on Sybil, even if you don’t care for the rest of us.”

83(“He knew, then, that I couldn’t do such a thing, that I haven’t the courage. He knows that I’ve lived too long in this world.”) Aloud she said, “You don’t know me, Anson.... In all these years you’ve never known me at all.”

84“Besides,” he added quickly, “he wouldn’t do such a thing. Such a climber isn’t likely to throw over his whole career by running away with a woman. You’d find out if you asked him.”

85“But he is willing. He’s already told me so. Perhaps you can’t understand such a thing.” When he did not answer, she said ironically, “Besides, I don’t think a gentleman would talk as you are talking. No, Anson.... I don’t think you know what the world is. You’ve lived here always, shut up in your own little corner.” Rising, she sighed and murmured, “But there’s no use in talk. I am going to bed.... I suppose we must struggle on as best we can ... but there are times ... times like to-night when you make it hard for me to bear it. Some day ... who knows ... there’s nothing any longer to keep me....”

86She went away without troubling to finish what she had meant to say, lost again in an overwhelming sense of the futility of everything. She felt, she thought, like an idiot standing in the middle of an empty field, making gestures.