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Show !x ! flOW and MARRIED IIFEl ! iwj, the noted author J I j Idah MGlohe Gibson i leUfiji'r, A Tie That Binds. , tetf K for lhc moment Helen's troubles ;fJs!;. loomed so much larger than mine. Whatever my hurt was from John, 1 ; did not have back of It the fear of ap v' f00ial ostracism. And I knew that evcn if Helen was not Jealous of the -Isfc ' child: en as she affirmed, still back in ..to ; her mind would always remain the I sen;e of having wronged the innocent. It was something she could never shako off. It made me think of an MS ancient proverb of the Arabs: "Thy A fatc ever5' man has been bound flsK T' aboul his neck-" About this thought JSj , there was something inflexible, imniut- . ablf inexorable. .jE Bobby's children were victims of the $E, selfishness of Helen and their father fP ' Jutn or utn also wns to blame msf' j for ihls curious triangle. JJn I Knew that Helen felt this even f 'i more acutely than I. Sne mso knew i that without reasoning much about mmj, ; it, Bobby would feel that he had souk robbed his children of the father they fTM i devotedly and blindly lovea Sides- i? I could see that deep uct n in her iffttt f heart Helen dreaded the children as 39f r potential rivals and as she had given ejf up everything to satisfy her love for mpi " Bobby she was fighting for her very vouK jj i'fe. iSHl j Responsibilities Much Greater. As L read the children's letter over Hr ?i again I could see that Helen knew K i that Bobby never would give ap his . B ;J c'liiflren And it dawned upon me, as I K ) I know it h(yl on her, that the re-H re-H 'j! sponsibilitles of life were much treating treat-ing 1 cr ihan the passion we call love. W All at once I knew that while I loved H-i 3 John ami that his nhvsieal attraction SR - for me was greater than that of anv S ) other man I had ever known, yet for j soov reason my head would never allow my heart to run wild. S$!l I knew instinctively at that moment Hpfflj j that I could not, to put it in a homely :j manner, place all my eggs in one bas- 3 1 ket, and although John might make mo j XCly unhappy for a timo, he would not H bo able to make my lifo completely Jw miserable forever. re j Tbat is what I felt just then, little lj : realizing that within a day my heart ffli would completely dominate my head, 53 T am lliat 1 3houltl De Perfectly willing SI to throw my lifo away because ltd jjjt j. linqings were unsatisfied. B j I did not think, consciously, of the 5 things I have written while I was j talking with Helen. It was only after- '? wan! that 1 was able to reason care J fully and to analyze these thoughts. .1 At the lime 1 said to her: I "I acknowledge all that you have ; said, and this letter from the children Helen dear, pulls at my heartstrings, j ' Hut I can not understand wh you : need to go home. Bobby will not be ;i back, for at least three or four weeks." ' Must Decide What to Do. j J "But in the meantime, Katherine, I 7 should be of no comfort either to you f or lo myself," Helen Interrupted. "I i niuhi decide before Bobby conies back. "what I.will do about the children J or rather this letter from the children." !! i "Why, there's only one thing to do!" I' 1 said, "and that is to send it on to I Bouby and say that you opened it through mistake." J "But don't you see, Katherine,' that f that course would be rather awkward? i Ho might have reason to mispect that j it was not wholly through mistake that i I op-.'ned the letter." ' "That is a contingency that you can- f not foresee. It wouldn't be like Bob- KjT hy to think that the women whom he Jores and trusts as he does you, would Jo a thing of that kind I believed you i HeUn, when you told me you opened 3 It by mistake, and how much more reason would he have to believe you He loves you more than anything else In the world " 'Ah, Katherine, I wish I could feel sure that this is true!" and I saw in her i-yes the dawning of a tragedy of mi understanding. "(.h, my dear Helen, stop and think for n moment! Don't you know that .here are thousands and thousands of men and women who become tired jaf marital yokes, thousands and thousands thous-ands of men, who after a moment of sudden .passion, would like to exchange ex-change old wives for new. But men. no :uatler what their vows and pledges pledg-es have been to the 'other women,' always al-ways accept the old regime of respectability. respect-ability. Few men love a woman enough to brave the world's disdalnn. Th's defying of convention is almost always a woman's prerogative. Could Never Distrust Him. "I.-. seems to me that if a man had given up wife and children for mo, as Bobby has for you, I should never distrust him." "Oh, but Katherine, 1 do not need to tell you that marriage is a very different dif-ferent thing from love. Sometimes it seems to me that it is as the great lovers of history have said: 'Marriage kills' love'." "You don't mean that, Helen! What you mean is, that marriage, in a way, kills passion. ,With the numberless things that come into married life, with the peculiar intimacies of every day experience, the illusion and glamour glam-our of passion fades. But it seems to me dear, that marriage might be even a happier if a more sedate experi-iencG, experi-iencG, Tomorrow Helen Goes Home. |