But Mrs. Travis refused her hand, and with a look of bitter suffering, which tried to appear resignation, went from the room.

Cecily felt a cold burden upon her heart.  She sat in a posture of listlessness, corresponding to the weary misery, numbing instead of torturing, which possessed her now that the shock was over.  Perhaps the strange manner of the revelation tended to produce this result; the strong self-control which she had exercised, the mingling of incongruous emotions, the sudden end of her expectation, brought about a mood resembling apathy.

She began presently to reflect, to readjust her view of the life she had been living.  It seemed to her now unaccountable that she had been so little troubled with fears.  Ignorance of the world had not blinded her, nor was she unaware of her husband’s history.  But the truth was that she had not cared to entertain suspicion.  For a long time she had not seriously occupied her mind with Reuben.  Self-absorbed, she was practically content to let happen what would, provided it called for no interference of hers.  Her indifference had reached the point of idly accepting the present, and taking for granted that things would always be much the same.

Yet she knew the kind of danger to which Reuben was exposed from the hour when her indifference declared itself; it was present to her imagination when he chose to remain alone in London.  But such thoughts were vague, impalpable.  She had never realized a picture of such degradation as this which had just stamped itself upon her brain.  In her surmises jealousy had no part, and therefore nothing was conceived in detail.  In the certainty that he no longer loved her with love of the nobler kind, did it matter much what he concealed?  But this flagrant shame had never threatened her.  This was indeed the “experience” in which, as Reuben had insisted, she was lacking.

No difficulty in understanding now why he kept away.  Would he ever come?  Or had he determined that their life in common was no longer possible, and resolved to spare her the necessity of saying that they were no longer husband and wife?  Doubtless that was what he expected to hear from her; his view of her character, which she understood sufficiently well, would lead him to think that.

But she had no impulse to leave his house.  The example of Mrs. Travis was too near.  Escape, with or without melodramatic notes of farewell, never suggested itself.  She knew that it was a practical impossibility to make that absolute severance of their lives without which they were still man and wife, though at a distance from each other; they must still be linked by material interests, by common acquaintances.  The end of sham heroics would come, sooner or later, in the same way as to Mrs. Travis.  How was her life different from what it had been yesterday?  By an addition of shame and scorn, that was all; actually, nothing was altered.  When Reuben heard that she was remaining at home, he would come to her.  Perhaps they might go to live in some other place; that was all.