Stretton shook his head.
"The reason remains. Indeed it is stronger now than it was when I first left England," he answered. He leaned forward with his elbows upon his knees, gazing into the fire. The light played upon his face, and Chase could not but notice the change which these few months had brought to him. He had grown thin, and rather worn; he had lost the comfortable look of prosperity; his face was tanned. But there was more. It might have been expected that the rough surroundings amidst which Stretton had lived would leave their marks. He might have become rather coarse, rather gross to the eye. On the contrary, there was a look of refinement. It was the long battle with his own thoughts which had left the marks. The mind was showing through the flesh. The face had become spiritualised.
"Yes, the reason remains," said Stretton. "I left home to keep my wife. We lived a life of quarrels. All the little memories, the associations, the thousand and one small private things--ideas, thoughts, words, jokes even, which two people who care very much for one another have in common--we were losing, and so quickly; so very quickly. I can't express half what I mean. But haven't you seen a man and a woman at a dinner-table, when some chance sentence is spoken, suddenly look at one another just for a second, smile perhaps, at all events speak, though no word is spoken? Well, that kind of intimacy was going. I saw indifference coming, perhaps dislike, perhaps contempt; yes, contempt, just because I sat there and looked on. So I went away. But the contempt has come. Oh, don't think I believe that I made a mistake in going away. It would have come none the less had I stayed. But I have to reckon with the fact that it has come."
Mr. Chase sat following Stretton's words with a very close attention. Never had Stretton spoken to him with so much frankness before.
"Go on," said Chase. "What you are saying is--much of it--news to me."
"Well, suppose that I were to go back now," Stretton resumed, "at once--do you see?--that contempt is doubled."
"No," cried Chase.
"Yes, yes," Stretton insisted. "Look at it from Millie's point of view, not from yours, not even from mine. Look at the history of the incident from the beginning! Work it out as she would; nay," he corrected himself, remembering the letters, "as she has. I leave her when things are at their worst. That's not all. I take half Millie's fortune, and am fool enough to lose it right away. And that's not all. I stay away in the endeavour to recover the lost ground, and I continually fail. Meanwhile Millie has the dreary, irksome, exacting, unrequited life, which I left behind, to get through as best she can alone; without pleasure, and she likes pleasure----" He suddenly looked at Chase, with a challenge in his eyes. "Why shouldn't she?" he asked abruptly. Chase agreed.
"Why shouldn't she?" he said, with a smile. "I am not disapproving."
Stretton resumed his former attitude, his former tone.