After the Storm

"Irene!" His voice was cold and deep, and as he pronounced her name

he withdrew himself from her embrace. At this she grew calm and

stepped a pace back from him.

"Irene, we are not children," he said, in the same cold, deep voice,

the tones of which were even and measured. "That time is past. Nor

foolish young lovers, who fall out and make up again twice or thrice

in a fortnight; but man and wife, with the world and its sober

realities before us."

"Oh, Hartley," exclaimed Irene, as he paused; "don't talk to me in

this way! Don't look at me so! It will kill me. I have done wrong. I

have acted like foolish child. But I am penitent. It was half in

sport that I went away, and I was so sure of seeing you at Ivy Cliff

yesterday that I told father you were coming."

"Irene, sit down." And Emerson took the hand of his wife and led her

to a sofa. Then, after closing the parlor door, he drew a chair and

seated himself directly in front of her. There was a coldness and

self-possession about him, that chilled Irene.

"It is a serious thing," he said, looking steadily in her face, "for

a wife to leave, in anger, her husband's house for that of her

father."

She tried to make some reply and moved her lips in attempted

utterance, but the organs of speech refused to perform their office.

"You left me once before in anger, and I went after you. But it was

clearly understood with myself then that if you repeated the act it

would be final in all that appertained to me; that unless you

returned, it would be a lifelong separation. You _have_ repeated the

act; and, knowing your pride and tenacity of will, I did not

anticipate your return. And so I was looking the sad, stern future

in the face as steadily as possible, and preparing to meet it as a

man conscious of right should be prepared to meet whatever trouble

lies in store for him. I went out this evening, after passing the

Christmas day alone, with the purpose of consulting an old and

discreet friend as to the wisest course of action. But the thing was

too painful to speak of yet. So I came back--and you are here!"

She looked at him steadily while he spoke, her face white as marble,

and her colorless lips drawn back from her teeth.

"Irene," he continued, "it is folly for us to keep on in the way we

have been going. I am wearied out, and you cannot be happy in a

relation that is for ever reminding you that your own will and

thought are no longer sole arbiters of action; that there is another

will and another thought that must at times be consulted, and even

obeyed. I am a man, and a husband; you a woman, and a wife,--we are

equal as to rights and duties--equal in the eyes of God; but to the

man and husband appertains a certain precedence in action; consent,

co-operation and approval, if he be a thoughtful and judicious man,

appertaining to the wife."