She glanced up--her father coming toward her.He was alone, was holding a folded letter uncertainly in his hand.He looked at her, his eyes full of pity and grief."Pauline," he began, "has everything been--been well--of late between you and--your husband?"She started."No, father," she replied.Then, looking at him with clear directness: "I've not been showing you and mother the truth about John and me--not for a long time."She saw that her answer relieved him.He hesitated, held out the letter.
"The best way is for you to read it," he said.It was a letter to him from Fanshaw.He was writing, he explained, because the discharge of a painful duty to himself would compel him "to give pain to your daughter whom I esteem highly," and he thought it only right "to prepare her and her family for what was coming, in order that they might be ready to take the action that would suggest itself." And he went on to relate his domestic troubles and his impending suit.
"Poor Leonora!" murmured Pauline, as she finished and sat thinking of all that Fanshaw's letter involved.
"Is it true, Polly?" asked her father.
She gave a great sigh of relief.How easy this letter had made all that she had been dreading! "Yes--it's true," she replied.
"I've known about--about it ever since the time I came back from the East and didn't return."The habitual pallor of her father's face changed to gray.
"I left him, father." She lifted her head, impatient of her stammering.A bright flush was in her face as she went on rapidly: "And I came to-day to tell you the whole story--to be truthful and honest again.I'm sick of deception and evasion.Ican't stand it any longer--I mustn't.I--you don't know how I've shrunk from wounding mother and you.But I've no choice now.
Father, I must be free--free!"
"And you shall be," replied her father."He shall not wreck your life and Gardiner's."Pauline stared at him."Father!" she exclaimed.
He put his arm round her and drew her gently to him.
"I know the idea is repellent," he said, as if he were trying to persuade a child."But it's right, Pauline.There are cases in which not to divorce would be a sin.I hope my daughter sees that this is one.""I don't understand," she said confusedly."I thought you and mother believed divorce was dreadful--no matter what might happen.""We did, Pauline.But we--that is, I--had never had it brought home.A hint of this story was published just after you came last year.I thought it false, but it set me to thinking.`If your daughter's husband had turned out to be as you once thought him, would it be right for her to live on with him? To live a lie, to pretend to keep her vows to love and honor him? Would it be right to condemn Gardiner to be poisoned by such a father?'
And at last I saw the truth, and your mother agreed with me.We had been too narrow.We had been laying down our own notions as God's great justice."Pauline drew away from her father so that she could look at him.
And at last she saw into his heart."If I had only known," she said, and sat numb and stunned.
"When you were coming home from college," her father went on, "your mother and I talked over what we should do.John had just confessed your secret marriage--""You knew that!"
"Yes, and we understood, Polly.You were so young--so headstrong--and you couldn't appreciate our reasons."Pauline's brain was reeling.
"Your mother and I talked it over before you got home and thought it best to leave you entirely free to choose.But when we saw you overcome by joy--""Don't!" she interrupted, her voice a cry of pain."I can't bear it! Don't!" Years of false self-sacrifice, of deceiving her parents and her child, of self-suppression and self-degradation, and this final cruelty to Gladys--all, all in vain, all a heaping of folly upon folly, of wrong upon wrong.
She rushed toward the house.She must fly somewhere--anywhere--to escape the thoughts that were picking with sharp beaks at her aching heart.Half-way up the walk she turned and fled to a refuge she would not have thought of half an hour before to her father's arms.
"Oh, father," she cried."If I had only known you!"Gladys, returning from her walk, went directly to Pauline's sitting-room.
"I'm off for New York and Europe to-morrow morning," she began abruptly, her voice hard, her expression bitter and reckless.
"Where can she have heard about Leonora?" thought Pauline.She said in a strained voice: "I had hoped you would stay here to look after the house.""To look after the house? What do you mean?" asked Gladys.
But she was too full of herself to be interested in the answer, and went on: "I want you to forget what I said to you.I've got over all that.I've come to my senses."Pauline began a nervous turning of her rings.
Gladys gave a short, grim laugh."I detest him," she went on.
"We're very changeable, we women, aren't we? I went out of this house two hours ago loving him--to distraction.I came back hating him.And all that has happened in between is that I met him and he kissed me a few times and stabbed my pride a few times."Pauline stopped turning her rings--she rose slowly, mechanically, looked straight at Gladys.
"That is not true," she said calmly.
Gladys laughed sardonically."You don't know the cold and haughty Governor Scarborough.There's fire under the ice.I can feel the places on my face where it scorched.Can't you see them?"Pauline gave her a look of disgust."How like John Dumont's sister!" she thought.And she shut herself in her room and stayed there, pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone.
