Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/236

 She rose and stood before a long mirror and looked at herself; as if to see if this was a different manner of woman than she who had stood there the day before. To her eyes, looking into the reflected depths of the room, her own image was representative of the world, and in facing it she seemed to taste something of that defiance of public knowledge of the scandal for which she so longed.

No thought disturbed her of her future relations to her husband or sons. For more than a third of a century, the lives of her husband and herself had flowed together, each relying on the other, each confident in the other. Breakage was not possible or to be thought of. He would not even ask her of this matter, and while that very fact would lay on her the greater weight of responsibility to tell him, the necessity did not put her under that fear which would have been the greatest burden to an ordinary woman. By this she did not mean that he would not feel the wound—feel it cruelly; but they had passed the crown of the road, their way lay downward, and she had no more doubt of him than she would have had of herself, if to him and not to her