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"I thought it was a fundamental article of our creed that the special circumstances produced by marriage were not to interfere with the full assertion of individual liberty." He paused a moment. "I thought that was your reason for leaving Arment." She flushed to the forehead. It was not like him to give a personal turn to the argument. "It was my reason," she said simply.
A plain, high, and tight-fitting g,arment is much the more elegant dress for the afternoon teas as we give them.
She felt his hand in hers: it was nerveless, reluctant. "Good-by," she repeated. "I understand now." She opened the door and passed out into the hall. As she did so, Arment took an impulsive step forward; but just then the footman, who was evidently alive to his obligations, advanced from the background to let her out. She heard Arment fall back.
The instinctive shrinking from a "scene" predominated over every other impulse, and Arment said slowly: "Will you come this way?" He followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door. Julia, as she advanced, was vaguely aware that the room at least was unchanged: time had not mitigated its horrors.
But she noted this insensibly: her one conscious thought was that, now she was face to face with him, she must not let him escape till he had heard her. Every pulse in her body throbbed with the urgency of her message. She went up to him as he drew back. "I must speak to you," she said. Arment hesitated, red and stammering. Julia glanced at the footman, and her look acted as a warning.
The impulse which had carried her there prolonged itself in a quick pressure of the electric bell then she felt suddenly weak and tremulous, and grasped the balustrade for support. The door opened and a young footman with a fresh inexperienced face stood on the threshold. Julia knew in an instant that he would admit her. "I saw Mr. Arment going in just now," she said.
John Arment was impossible; but the sting of his impossibility lay in the fact that he made it impossible for those about him to be other than himself. By an unconscious process of elimination he had excluded from the world everything of which he did not feel a personal need: had become, as it were, a climate in which only his own requirements survived.
What name, please?" Julia trembled: she had not thought of that. "Merely say a lady," she returned carelessly. The footman wavered and she fancied herself lost; but at that instant the door opened from within and John Arment stepped into the hall.
This might seem to imply a deliberate selfishness; but there was nothing deliberate about Arment. He was as instinctive as an animal or a child. It was this childish element in his nature which sometimes for a moment unsettled his wife's estimate of him. Was it possible that he was simply undeveloped, that he had delayed, somewhat longer than is usual, the laborious process of growing up?
The impulse which had carried her there prolonged itself in a quick pressure of the electric bell then she felt suddenly weak and tremulous, and grasped the balustrade for support. The door opened and a young footman with a fresh inexperienced face stood on the threshold. Julia knew in an instant that he would admit her. "I saw Mr. Arment going in just now," she said.
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