by pride or shame will not,
ask help in carrying.

Henderson drew more and more apart from confidences, and was alone
in building up the colossal structure of his wealth. Father Damon was
carrying his renewed temptation alone, after all his brave confession
and attempt at renunciation. Ruth Leigh plodded along alone, with her
secret which was the joy and the despair of her life--the opening of a
gate into the paradise which she could never enter. Jack Delancy, the
confiding, open-hearted good fellow, had come to a stage in his journey
where he also was alone. Not even to Carmen could he confess the extent
of his embarrassments, nor even in her company, nor in the distraction
of his increasingly dissipated life, could he forget them. Not only had
his investments been all transferred to his speculations, but his home
had been mortgaged, and he did not dare tell Edith of the lowering cloud
that hung over it; and that his sole dependence was the confidence of
the Street, which any rumor might shatter, in that one of Henderson's
schemes to which he had committed himself. Edith, the one person who
could have comforted him, was the last person to whom he could have told
this, for he had the most elementary, and the common conception of what
marriage is.

But Edith's lot was the most pitiful of all. She was not only alone, but
compelled to inaction. She saw the fair fabric of her life dissolving,
and neither by cries nor tears, by appeals nor protest, by show of anger
nor by show of suffering, could she hinder the dissolution. Strong in
herself and full of courage, day by day and week by week she felt her
powerlessness. Heaven knows what it cost her--what it costs all women
in like circumstances--to be always cheerful, never to show distrust. If
her love were not enough, if her attractions were not enough, there was
no human help to which she could appeal.

And what, pray, was there to appeal? There was no visible neglect, no
sufficient alienation for gossip to take hold of. If there was a little
talk about Jack's intimacy elsewhere, was there anything uncommon
in that? Affairs went on as usual. Was it reasonable to suppose that
society should notice that one woman's heart was full of foreboding,
heavy with a sense of loss and defeat, and with the ruin of two lives?
Could simple misery like this rise to the dignity of tragedy in a world
that has its share of tragedies, shocking and violent, but is on the
whole going on deco