She paused a moment. “I’ll do just
as you wish,” she returned pliantly. “I
thought it would be less awkward to speak to him when
we meet.”
Her pliancy was beginning to sicken him. Had
she really no will of her own—no theory
about her relation to these men? She had accepted
Haskett—did she mean to accept Varick?
It was “less awkward,” as she had said,
and her instinct was to evade difficulties or to circumvent
them. With sudden vividness Waythorn saw how the
instinct had developed. She was “as easy
as an old shoe”—a shoe that too many
feet had worn. Her elasticity was the result of
tension in too many different directions. Alice
Haskett—Alice Varick—Alice Waythorn—she
had been each in turn, and had left hanging to each
name a little of her privacy, a little of her personality,
a little of the inmost self where the unknown god
abides.
“Yes—it’s better to speak to
Varick,” said Waythorn wearily.
“Earth’s Martyrs.” By Stephen
Phillips.
THE WINTER wore on, and society took advantage of
the Waythorns’ acceptance of Varick. Harassed
hostesses were grateful to them for bridging over
a social difficulty, and Mrs. Waythorn was held up
as a miracle of good taste. Some experimental
spirits could not resist the diversion of throwing
Varick and his former wife together, and there were
those who thought he found a zest in the propinquity.
But Mrs. Waythorn’s conduct remained irreproachable.
She neither avoided Varick nor sought him out.
Even Waythorn could not but admit that she had discovered
the solution of the newest social problem.
He had married her without giving much thought to
that problem. He had fancied that a woman can
shed her past like a man. But now he saw that
Alice was bound to hers both by the circumstances which
forced her into continued relation with it, and by
the traces it had left on her nature. With grim
irony Waythorn compared himself to a member of a syndicate.
He held so many shares in his wife’s personality
and his predecessors were his partners in the business.
If there had been any element of passion in the transaction
he would have felt less deteriorated by it. The
fact that Alice took her change of husbands like a
change of weather reduced the situation to mediocrity.
He could have forgiven her for blunders, for excesses;
for resisting Hackett, for yielding to Varick; for
anything but her acquiescence and her tact. She
reminded him of a juggler tossing knives; but the
knives were blunt and she knew they would never cut
her.
