She
takes up her work again, and stitches away in the comfortable
certainty that in half an hour she will have recovered her temper, and
he also; that they will pass a sulky night; and to-morrow, by about
mid-day, without explanation or formal reconciliation, have become as
good friends as ever. "Perhaps," says she to herself, with a woman's
sense of power, "if he be very much ashamed and very wet, I'll pity
him and make friends to-night."
Miserable enough are these little squabbles. Why will two people, who
have sworn to love and cherish each other utterly, and who, on the
whole, do what they have sworn, behave to each other as they dare for
very shame behave to no one else? Is it that, as every beautiful thing
has its hideous antitype, this mutual shamelessness is the devil's
ape of mutual confidence? Perhaps it cannot be otherwise with beings
compact of good and evil. When the veil of reserve is withdrawn from
between two souls, it must be withdrawn for evil, as for good, till
the two natures, which ought to seek rest, each in the other's inmost
depths, may at last spring apart, confronting each other recklessly
with,--"There, you see me as I am; you know the worst of me, and I of
you; take me as you find me--what care I?"
Elsley and Lucia have not yet arrived at that terrible crisis: though
they are on the path toward it,--the path of little carelessnesses,
rudenesses, ungoverned words and tempers, and, worst of all, of that
half-confidence, which is certain to avenge itself by irritation and
quarrelling; for if two married people will not tell each other in
love what they ought, they will be sure to tell each other in anger
what they ought not.
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