The Helpmate Part 75

"What more indeed? I'm to understand, then, that everything I was told is true?"

"It _was_ true."

"And is not now?"

"No. Whoever told you, omitted to tell you that."

"You mean you have given up living with this woman?"

"Yes. If you call it living with her."

"You have given it up--for how long?"

"About five weeks." His voice was almost inaudible.

She winced. Five weeks back brought her to the date of Peggy's death.

"I dare say," she said. "You could hardly--have done less in the circ.u.mstances."

"Anne," he said. "I gave it up--I broke it off--before that. I--I broke with her that morning--before I heard."

"You were away that night."

"I was not with her."

"Well--And it was going on, all the time, for three years before that?"

"Yes."

"Ever since your sister's death?"

He did not answer.

"Ever since Edie died," she repeated, as if to herself rather than to him.

"Not quite. Why don't you say--since you sent me away?"

"When did I ever send you away?"

"That night. When I came to you."

She remembered.

"Then? Walter, that is unforgivable. To bring up a little thing like that--"

"You call it a little thing? A little thing?"

"I had forgotten it. And for you to remember it all these years--and to cast it up against me--_now_--"

"I haven't cast anything up against you."

"You implied you held me responsible for your sin."

"I don't hold you responsible for anything. Not even for that."

Her face never changed. She did not take in the meaning of his emphasis.

He continued. "And, if you want your separation, you shall have it.

Though I did hope that you might consider that six years was about enough of it."

"I did want it. But I do not want it now. When I wrote that letter I had forgotten my promise."

"You shall have your promise back again if you want it. I shall not hold you to it, or to anything, if you'd rather not."

"I can never have my promise back--I made it to Edie."

"To Edie?"

"Yes. A short time before she died."

His face brightened.

"What did you promise her?" he said softly.

"That I would never leave you."

"Did she make you promise not to?"

"No. It did not occur to her that I could leave you. She did not think it possible."

"But _you_ did?"

"I thought it possible--yes."

"Even then. There was no reason then. I had given you no cause."

"I did not know that."

"Do you mean that you suspected me--then?"

"I never accused you, Walter, even in my thoughts."

"You suspected?"

"I didn't know."

"And--afterwards--did you suspect anything?"