“You are very like him, you know,” she observed. “You have just his way of snubbing and repressing people. You don’t seem to understand that everybody can’t keep their feelings bottled up as you do. It was not my fault that he was unhappy. I think he had an unhappy nature.”
“That is nonsense,” I said, “and you know it. My father was a most simple, friendly, companionable man—only you never would be a real wife to him.”
“He wouldn’t let me,” she said. “I know we didn’t hit it off very well, at the end, but I did try, Paul. I did indeed. In the beginning I was ready to give him all the love and affection that was in me. But he didn’t like it. He dried me up. He broke my spirit, Paul.”
“My father was not a demonstrative man,” I said, “but you know quite well that he was proud of you and devoted to you. If you had heard him speak of you as I have heard him—”
“Ah!” she said, quickly, “but I never did. That was the trouble. What is the good of being praised behind one’s back if one is always being scolded and snubbed to one’s face? It only makes it worse. Everyone thinks one has such a good husband, and that one ought to be so happy and grateful—and all the time they never know what one is suffering from unkind words and cold looks at home.”
“Many women would envy you,” I said. “Would you rather have had a husband who was all charming manners at home and unfaithful the minute your back was turned?”
“Yes,” she said, “I would.”
“I can’t understand you,” I said. “You ought to be ashamed to speak like this.”
“No,” she said, “you can’t understand. That’s it. Neither could he.”