“Only this,” Dick said. “I am going to refuse to delude myself any longer; and it is fair to you as it is to me that you should know it. I am going to stop telling myself that you are my ideal woman, when you have shown me, for instance, your unwillingness to make such tender self-sacrifice as a mother must give to a child—that you are true and honest when you are guilty of an underhand thrust like that little squib about Madeline—that—”
“Ah,” shrieked Lena, leaping to her feet with the light beginning to come into her eyes. “So that’s what’s the matter! That girl—”
“No,” said Dick evenly, “that is not what cuts most. What hurts through and through, Lena, is the knowledge that you don’t even love me enough, in spite of all my wasted passion, to keep from intriguing with another man behind my back for the sake of a few bits of red glass.”
“How—did Mr. Early—?” Lena began, but he interrupted her again.
“Did it seem such a simple thing to keep me perpetually blinded? Last night, Lena, I paid your debt to Mr. Early. I sold my vote in the council, along with my self-respect and my honor in the sight of others to get back this shred of paper. Once I might have thought you sinned ignorantly, but I know you better now. Here is that priceless scrap.” He drew it from his pocket and threw it into her lap. “Now I’ve swept away all the mists! There can’t be any sweet illusions between you and me, Lena.” He drew a sharp breath.
Lena’s heart was beating very fast and her eyes were down. She saw shrewdly that there was no need of argument on any of these topics. The less she said about them the better for her. And Dick, with his hands in his pockets, was watching her from the other side of the room. She twisted the piece of paper in her hands. She had always a bald way of telling herself the truth. Now she would face Dick in the same spirit. After all, she was his wife. He couldn’t get away from that.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose you don’t love me any more?” Her voice was like her mother’s, acid and selfish.
“Do you love me?” asked Dick.
“No!” said Lena. She saw him writhe and felt glad that she had the power to hurt him, but he answered very gently.
“Then I still have the advantage of you, Lena. I love you, not in the old way I once dreamed of loving—but still I love you. All this that I’ve said to-night was not spoken in the heat of anger. I’ve known these facts for a long time, and you have never felt any change in my manner; but gradually I have come to see that there could never be any genuine relations between us—you and me—so long as you thought me just a silly dupe for you to get everything you could from, to be played on as you pleased. We must begin again, a new way. You don’t love me, you say. I do love you, sweetheart, not for what I thought you were, but for what you are, because you are my wife, because you need my tenderness and help. But I’m not going to let you lead any longer. We can’t even walk side by side as some husbands and wives do.” Dick seemed to hear the voices of Ellery and Madeline by their own fireside, and he went on hurriedly. “You needn’t look at me that way, Lena, as if you were afraid of me. I shall want you to be comfortable and happy. I shall try to give you the things you want—things—things—things! But I have some purposes in life, and they, not you, are to be my master-spirits.”