"I feel as if that were true," said Karen, looking now down upon the ground. "I think I have no more love for you. I find you a petty man." It was impossible to hope that she was speaking recklessly or passionately. She had come to the conclusion with deliberation; she had been thinking of it since last night. She was willing to cast him off because he could not love where she loved. How deeply the roots of hope still knotted themselves in him he was now to realize. He felt his heart and mind rock with the reverberation of the shattering, the pulverizing explosion, and he saw his life lying in a wilderness of dust about him.
Yet the words he found were not the words of his despair. "Even if you feel like this, Karen," he said, "there is no necessity for behaving like a lunatic. Go and stay with your guardian, by all means, and whenever you like. Start to-morrow morning. Spend most of your time with her. I shall not put the smallest difficulty in your way. But—if only for your own sake—have some common-sense and keep up appearances. You must remain my wife in name and the mistress of my house."
"Thank you, you mean to be kind, I know," said Karen, who had not looked at him since her declaration; "But I am not a conventional woman and I do not wish to live with a man who is no longer my husband. I do not wish to keep up appearances. I do not wish it to be said—by those who know my guardian and what she has done for me and been to me—that I keep up the appearance of regard for a man who hates her. I made a mistake in marrying you; you allowed me to make it. Now, as far as I can, I undo it by leaving you. Perhaps," she added, "you could divorce me. That would set you free."
The remark in its childishness, callousness, and considerateness struck him as one of the most revealing she had made. He laughed icily. "Our laws only allow of divorce for one cause and I advise you not to seek freedom for yourself—or for me—by disgracing yourself. It's not worth it. The conventions you scorn have their solid value."
She had now turned her head and was looking at him. "I think you are insulting me," she said.
For the first time he observed a trembling in her voice and interpreted it as anger. It gave him a hurting satisfaction to have made her angry. She had appalled and shattered him.
"I am not insulting you, I am warning you, Karen," he said. "A woman who can behave as you are behaving is capable of acts of criminal folly. You don't believe in convention, and in your guardian's world you will meet many men who don't."
"What do you mean by criminal folly?"
"I mean living with a man you're not married to."
He had simply and sincerely forgotten something. Karen's face grew ashen.