Could she leave him—take the boys and leave? It was impossible. Regardless of her unhappiness, it wasn’t right to think of herself before the children. Alan and Ted loved their father; and for her to deprive them of his love because he had become indifferent to her was the kind of selfishness it was not in her to give in to. It was impossible also that she could ever love another man. She was the kind who gave only once, and all; there was nothing left for her if she was not wanted by the one man she loved. The uncertainty of whether or not he still loved her was undoing her; interiorly she was going to pieces, developing a self-­distaste which very possibly contributed to their dilemma as much as his own indifference, for he was a perceptive man and saw these things. She was never able to keep from him her smallest emotional reaction. From knowing her so well, he had acquired an intuition of her slightest mood or change of mood; and his growing knowledge that she was afraid must have made him despise her the more.

If she wasn’t still in love with him, it wouldn’t matter; perhaps then she could accept the situation, fulfill her duties as a mother, and go on for the children’s sake. But passionately she loved her husband: she had belonged to him too much, and been a part of him too long, not to.

During the spring they had had a small quarrel, a quarrel in which each of them, as if by secret agreement, had skirted the real issue that was too dangerous to uncover. Irrelevantly she had found herself saying: “What about me, I’ve got to get some happiness out of life, I can’t go on like this!” And he had answered, sarcastically but all too truly: “The trouble with you is, you can’t accept the plain facts of life. Look at other people! Who do we know that’s happily married? Not one couple. Take your own father and mother. Do you think for one moment they’re happily married?” “That makes no difference,” she had cried helplessly, “I don’t care about ‘other people,’ no, not even Papa and Mama. I won’t be like other people—life’s too short!” He took his time to light a cigarette and then answered: “Tolstoy says the chief cause of unhappiness in marriage is because people have been taught to think marriage means happiness. The more happiness we expect from marriage, the more we suffer. We expect the impossible, and aren’t prepared for the usual.” “Rubbish!” “Tolstoy rubbish? Now, really! He also says—” In anger she cut him short: “To hell with Tolstoy, I’m talking about me!” But, defeated, she had left the room.