Now this new pestilence raging in other regions of the country had
incredibly reached her, she thought, on the sheltered lowlands where
the older traditions of American home life still lay like foundation
rock. The corruption of it had attacked him; the ruin of it awaited
her; and thus to-night she took her place among those women whom the
world first hears of as in hospitals and sanitariums and places of
refuge and in their graves--and more sadly elsewhere; whose
misfortunes interested the press and whose types attracted the
novelists.
She was one of them.
They swarmed about her; one by one she recognized them: the woman who
unable to bear up under her tragedy soon sinks into eternity--or walks
into it; the woman who disappears from the scene and somewhere under
another name or with another lot lives on--devoting herself to memory
or to forgetfulness; the woman who stays on in the house, giving to
the world no sign for the sake of everything else that still remains
to her but living apart--on the other side of the locked door; the
woman who stays on without locking the door, half-hating,
half-loving--the accepted and rejected compromise; the woman who
welcomes the end of the love-drama as the beginning of peace and the
cessation of annoyances; the woman who begins to act her tragedy to
servants and children and acquaintances--reaping sympathy for herself
and sowing ruin and torture--for him; the woman who drops the care of
house, ends his comforts, thus forcing the sharp reminder of her value
as at least an investment toward his general well-being; the woman who
endeavors to rekindle dying coals by fanning them with fresh
fascinations; the woman who plays upon jealousy and touches the male
instinct to keep one's own though little prized lest another acquire
it and prize it more; the woman who sets a watch to discover the other
woman: they swarmed about her, she identified each.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134