“I have told you precisely what I saw; it is for you to impeach my motives, if you please, and to think, in your infatuation, that I dislike Mr. Santley because of the cloth he wears. If you doubt me, question the girl; you can possibly get the truth from her. In any case, remember that, from this moment, I forbid you to entertain that man in my house.”
The next day, i.e. yesterday, Santley called. She did not see him, but sent out a message that she was engaged. I saw him creeping, pale and crestfallen, past my laboratory door.
Since the conversation recorded above, Ellen and I have not alluded to the subject; indeed, we have seen little of each other, and spoken still less. Possibly our temporary estrangement might account for the fixed pallor, the cold look of sorrow and reproach, on my wife’s face; but I am inclined to fear otherwise. At all events, the thing had gone so far, and I knew so much, that the overtures to reconciliation could not come from me. I had to conquer my struggling tenderness, and watch.
The great struggle came this morning. I observed it with sickening suspense. Had honest indignation conquered, had Ellen held to her first decision of not returning into that man’s church, I think I should have taken her into my arms and begged her pardon for suspecting her. But no! she has gone; not, I am sure, to pray. Surely I am a model husband, to sit so tamely here!
_Sunday Evening._--She drove home immediately after morning service, and
I saw by the expression of her face that she was greatly agitated. We lunched in silence, and afterwards she took a volume of sermons and sat reading on the terrace. Later on in the afternoon, while I sat writing alone, she came in behind me, and before I could speak, put her arms around my neck and kissed me.
“Forgive me,” she cried, with her beautiful eyes full of tears. “Oh, George, I am so unhappy! I cannot bear to quarrel.”
And she knelt by my side, looking pitifully up into my face.
I returned her kiss, and for the time being, in her soft embrace, forgot my suspicions. It was a happy hour! Neither of us spoke of the subject of our disagreement.
_Tuesday_.--After a temporary calm, the storm has again broken, and the weather is still charged with thunder. Let me try to record calmly what has taken place.
