Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/370

 said, in a low voice, "I know, my child . . . I know. I've suffered, too . . . for fifteen years."

She had begun to sob again. "And now there are other women . . . more than one, I'm sure. I pray to God for his soul. I pray and pray to God to return him to me . . . my Philip, who was a good man and believed in God. He's changed now. I don't know him any more. To-night I don't think I love him. I've come to the end of everything."

He began to pat her shoulder, gently, as if he were comforting a child, and for a long time, they stayed thus in silence. At last he said, "I've suffered, too, Naomi . . . for years and years. . . . It began almost as soon as I was married, and it's never stopped for an hour, for a moment since. It gets worse and worse with each year." Suddenly he covered his face with his hands and groaned. "I pray to God for strength to go on living. I have need of God's help to goon at all. I, too, need some one to talk to." His hands dropped from his face, and he placed one arm about her thin, narrow shoulders. She did not draw away. Still sobbing, she let her whole weight rest against him. She was so tired, and she felt so ill. A strange, gusty and terrifying happiness took possession of the tired, nerve-racked man. Just to touch a woman thus, to have a woman kind to him, to have a woman who would trust him, was a pleasure almost too keen to be borne. For fifteen acid years he had hungered for a moment, a single moment, like this. He did not speak, conscious, it seemed, that to breathe might suddenly shatter this fragile, pathetic sense of peace.

Naomi had closed her eyes, as if she had fallen