He had then
suggested that they dine together and go to any theater she liked.
Charity Coe's head was turned by all this attention. "Three meals
a day and a show with her own husband" was going the honeymoon pace.
But she returned to the normal speed, for he did not come home
to dress or to dine or to go to the theater. No word came from him
until Charity Coe was all dressed; then a clerk telephoned her that
her husband regretted he could not come home, as he had to rush for
the Philadelphia train.
Charity could not quite disbelieve this, nor quite believe. She
had spent the evening debating married love and honeymoons that
wax and wane and wax again, and a wife's duty and her rights and
might-have-beens, perhapses, and if-only's.
Charity had put on her jewels, which had not been taken out of
the safe for years, but he had not arrived. Alarm and resentment
wrestled for her heart; they prospered alternately. Now she trembled
with fear for her husband; now she smothered with wrath at his
indifference to her.
Who was he that he should keep her waiting, and who were the Cheevers
that they should break engagements with the Coes? It was only at such
times that her pride of birth flared in her, and then only enough
to sustain her through grievous humiliations.
But what are humiliations that we should mind them so? They come
to everybody in turn, and they are as relentless and impersonal as
the sun marching around the sky.
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