No doubt she regarded it as a
momentary act of expiation. That's the way her romances taught her
to look at loveless marriage--as something spectacular, transitory,
instead of the enduring, degrading squalor that it is!"
"What in the world are you talking about, David? I should think
_you_ were a novelist yourself, by the wild way you go on! You
have no proof whatever that Barker isn't happily engaged. I'm sure
he's got a much better girl than he deserves, and one that's fully
his equal. She's only too fond of that dry stick. Such a girl as the
one you described,--like that mysterious visitor of yours,--what
possible relation could she have with him? She was a lady!"
"Yes, yes! Of course, it's absurd. But everybody seems to be tangled
up with everybody else. My dear, will you give me a cup of tea? I
think I'll go to writing at once."
Before she left her husband to order his tea Mrs. Sewell asked, "And
do you think you have got through with him now?"
"I have just begun with him," replied Sewell.
His mind, naturally enough in connection with Lemuel, was running
upon his friend Evans, and the subject they had once talked of in
that room. It was primarily in thinking of him that he begun to
write his sermon on Complicity, which made a great impression at the
time, and had a more lasting effect as enlarged from the newspaper
reports, and reprinted in pamphlet form.
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