Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/79

 With the ache set throbbing again he sat down and began to scribble a reply. "Dear Rhoda, why in God's name can't you let my life take it's own course—"

He crumpled up the paper and threw it away. He was thinking of occasions when he had played a hand in the course of her life, of the time for example when he had advised her not to go to college and risk being turned into the sort of compromise Radcliffe had made of Emma Sipe, that appalling theorizer. Furthermore it was becoming depressingly clear to him that Rhoda's intrusion had not been the cause of his adversity but merely the hastener of it. With her feminine intuition she had long ago foreseen the day when the wind would be taken out of his sails, but it wasn't in the bond that Rhoda should take it out; she might have had the grace to leave Sophie a free hand. Had she done so, he and Sophie might have progressed at least to a momentary state of felicity from which, if it proved to be more than Sophie with her aesthetic scruples felt willing to consummate, she might at any rate have retreated without humiliation. Whether or not Rhoda was aware of what she had done, she had acted with a sureness that could not have been more deadly if she had been Sophie's foe. He had every reason to absolve her, but the incident had none the less taught him that no woman who has an interest, mild or intense, in a man can be trusted to see another woman as he sees her, It also confirmed a theory about himself which he had already formulated as a