But here abruptly Sidney found the great injustice
of the world—that because of this vice
the good suffer more than the wicked. Her young
spirit rose in hot rebellion.
“It isn’t fair!” she cried.
“It makes me hate all the men in the world.
Palmer cares for you, and yet he can do a thing like
this!”
Christine was pacing nervously up and down the room.
Mere companionship had soothed her. She was
now, on the surface at least, less excited than Sidney.
“They are not all like Palmer, thank Heaven,”
she said. “There are decent men.
My father is one, and your K., here in the house,
is another.”
At four o’clock in the morning Palmer Howe came
home. Christine met him in the lower hall.
He was rather pale, but entirely sober. She
confronted him in her straight white gown and waited
for him to speak.
“I am sorry to be so late, Chris,” he
said. “The fact is, I am all in.
I was driving the car out Seven Mile Run. We
blew out a tire and the thing turned over.”
Christine noticed then that his right arm was hanging
inert by his side.
Young Howe had been firmly resolved to give up all
his bachelor habits with his wedding day. In
his indolent, rather selfish way, he was much in love
with his wife.
But with the inevitable misunderstandings of the first
months of marriage had come a desire to be appreciated
once again at his face value. Grace had taken
him, not for what he was, but for what he seemed to
be. With Christine the veil was rent.
She knew him now—all his small indolences,
his affectations, his weaknesses. Later on, like
other women since the world began, she would learn
to dissemble, to affect to believe him what he was
not.
Grace had learned this lesson long ago. It was
the ABC of her knowledge. And so, back to Grace
six weeks after his wedding day came Palmer Howe, not
with a suggestion to renew the old relationship, but
for comradeship.
Christine sulked—he wanted good cheer;
Christine was intolerant—he wanted tolerance;
she disapproved of him and showed her disapproval—he
wanted approval. He wanted life to be comfortable
and cheerful, without recriminations, a little work
and much play, a drink when one was thirsty.
Distorted though it was, and founded on a wrong basis,
perhaps, deep in his heart Palmer’s only longing
was for happiness; but this happiness must be of an
active sort—not content, which is passive,
but enjoyment.
“Come on out,” he said. “I’ve
got a car now. No taxi working its head off
for us. Just a little run over the country roads,
eh?”
It was the afternoon of the day before Christine’s
night visit to Sidney. The office had been closed,
owing to a death, and Palmer was in possession of
a holiday.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “We’ll
go out to the Climbing Rose and have supper.”
