He was not man enough to make the
accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since
the day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her out to
Jansen, nominally to nurse those stricken with smallpox under Father
Bourassa's care, actually to be where her wretched husband could come
to her once a year, as he had asked with an impossible selfishness?
Each year she had seen him for an hour or less, giving him money,
speaking to him over a gulf so wide that it seemed sometimes as though
her voice could not be heard across it; each year opening a grave to look
at the embalmed face of one who had long since died in shame, which only
brought back the cruellest of all memories, that which one would give
one's best years to forget. With a fortitude beyond description she had
faced it, gently, quietly, but firmly faced it--firmly, because she had
to be firm in keeping him within those bounds the invasion of which would
have killed her. And after the first struggle with his unchangeable
brutality it had been easier: for into his degenerate brain there had
come a faint understanding of the real situation and of her.
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