“You haven’t seen Miriam?”

“No, and I don’t know whether I can.  There as no need for you to keep silence about me when you see her; what has happened can’t be hidden.  I thought it possible that Reuben might have written and told her.  If she comes here, I shall welcome her, but it is better for me not to seek her first.”

“If he writes to her,” asked Eleanor, with a grave look, “is it likely that he will try to defend himself?”

“I understand you.  You mean, defend himself by throwing blame of one kind or another on me.  No, that is impossible.  He has no desire to do that.  What makes our relations to each other so hopeless, is that we can be so coldly just.  In me there is no resentment left, and in him no wish to disguise his own conduct.  We are simply nothing to each other.  I appreciate all the good in him and all the evil; and to him my own qualities are equally well known.  We have reached the point of studying each other in a mood of scientific impartiality—­ surely the most horrible thing in man and wife.”

Eleanor had a sense of relief in hearing that last comment.  For the tone of the speech put her painfully in mind of that which characterizes certain French novelists all very well in its place, but on Cecily’s lips an intolerable discord.  It was as though the girl’s spirit had been materialized by Parisian influences; yet the look and words with which she ended did away with, or at least mitigated, that fear.

“He is pursued by a fate,” murmured the listener.

“Listen to my defence;” said Cecily, after a pause, with more earnestness.  “For I have not been blameless through. out Before we left London, he charged me with contributing to what had befallen us, and in a measure he was right.  He said that I had made no effort to keep him faithful to me that I had watched the gulf growing between us with indifference, and allowed him to take his own course.  A jealous and complaining wife, he said, would have behaved more for his good.  Hearing this, I recognized its truth.  I had held myself too little responsible.  When our life in Paris began, I resolved that I would accept my duties in another spirit I did all that a wife can do to strengthen the purer part in him.  I interested myself in whatever he undertook; I suggested subjects of study which I thought congenial to him and studied them together with him, putting aside everything of my own for which he did not care.  And for a time I was encouraged by seeming success.  He was grateful to me, and I found my one pleasure in this absolute devotion of myself.  I choose my words carefully; you must not imagine that there was more in either his feeling or mine than what I express.  But it did not last more than six months.  Then he grew tired of it.  I still did my utmost; believe that I did, Mrs. Spence, for it is indeed true.  I made every effort in my power to prevent what I knew was threatening.  Until he began to practise deceit, trickery of every kind.  What more could I do?  If he was determined to deceive me, he would do so; what was gained by my obliging him to exert more cunning?  Then I turned sick at heart, and the end came.”