Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/118

 she had never realized that she could talk so frankly with him. They had gone over things together from the beginning, just as she and the social worker had done.

Mr. Gordon told his wife that he would lie to her no longer. He admitted that his love had never been anything but physical. He said that she "would have to go on without him except for financial support" which he realized he must supply. Thus, he himself confronted his wife with the adjustment which she must eventually make.

Neither this interview nor the one with the social worker was alone enough to cause Mrs. Gordon to accept the possibility of a permanent separation from her husband. The great revolutions in life are not so easily gone through with as this. These two interviews were just the beginning of her recognition that her home would have to be built upon a different basis. It required many weeks and the continued indifference of her husband to establish the inevitable finally in her mind and in her plans; but it was the revealing interview with the social worker that supplied the foundation for an understanding of what her life had been and the nature of the adjustment she must make.