Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/229

 seemed to him that he must speak the truth, if he were ever to open them again without shame.

"Because she's not really my wife . . . she's just like any woman, any stranger . . . I never loved her at all. I can't go on . . . living like that. Can't you see how wicked it is?"

Emma was caught in her own web, by the very holy principles she upheld—that it was wrong to marry some one you did not love. It was this same thing which disturbed her peace of mind about Moses Slade.

"You loved her once, Philip, or you wouldn't have married her."

"No, I didn't know anything then, Ma." The color of pain entered his voice. "Can't you see, Ma? I wasn't alive then. I never loved her, and now it's worse than that."

The stroking of his forehead suddenly ceased. "I don't know what you're talking about, Philip. . . . We'd better not go on now. You're tired and ill. Everything will be different when you are well again."

For a second time there came to him a blinding flash of revelation. He saw that she had always been like that: she had always pushed things aside to let them work themselves out. An awful doubt dawned upon him that she was not always right, that sometimes she had made a muddle of everything. A feeling of dizziness swept over him.

"But it will break her heart, Philip," she was saying. "She worships you. . . . It will break her heart."

Through a giddy haze he managed to say, "No . . . I'm so tired. . . . Let's not talk any more." He felt the nightmare stealing back again, and presently he was for some strange reason back at Megambo, sitting