‘You want to visit your people without me? Say it out!’ Gaston Arbuthnot’s colour heightened. ‘This is rough—harder punishment than I deserve, and a risky experiment! Think it over twice. I’ve been in the world thirty years, Dinah, and have seen somewhat of most things. I have never seen any good come of man and wife trying their hand at these little imitation divorces.’
‘I cannot live up to your life,’ answered Dinah, unshrinkingly. ‘I cannot understand you, or your friends, or the feelings you have for each other. If I stayed, I might grow myself to be—well, something I don’t care to think of. I was meant for the ways of common working people. It suits me to be told things plain and straightforward, to keep to my duty, to find my happiness there.’
‘My poor Dinah! Have you not always kept to duty?’ For once in his life, Gaston Arbuthnot spoke from impulse.
‘Up to this time, because my heart has been full. I have loved you so much ... there has been no room for any feeling but love! This could not last for ever, and you always away, and others—ladies born and educated—not ashamed to take you from me. I might grow hard. I might grow vain—worse! Yes, Gaston, down in my heart I feel all this is possible. And so, if you please——’
‘Don’t hesitate. Let everything he absolutely clear between us.’
‘I will go home. My father’s sisters, I know, would be willing to take me in while they live, and I can work at my trade as I used, of course, if you will give me leave.’
Gaston Arbuthnot stood for a few seconds motionless. Then, without a word, he walked to the farthest end of the room. He stood, gazing upon some local oil-painting of an impossible First Napoleon, mounted on a still more impossible charger, as intently as though he gazed upon one of Raphael’s masterpieces. Let anger, wounded pride—ah, more dreaded than either, let easy acquiescence be on her husband’s face, Dinah could see it not!
She waited for him to speak, with the tension of nerves that is a bodily pain; hoping nothing—the time for hope was past—fearing only lest, under the sting of her proposal, he should tell her that he no longer loved her. The truth, itself, had, in that moment, seemed small beside the possibility of his confessing it.
But Gaston Arbuthnot was not a man of coarse or cruel words.
‘I never looked for such a scene—I am not good at these high passions! Your vehemence forces me into the sort of position I detest. I have told you often, Dinah, that in everything,’—he leaned sideways, as though seeking a point whence the impossible Napoleon might be more advantageously viewed—‘in everything I am a light weight. No use asking from me the feats of an athlete. In life, I walk quietly. In art, I can produce nothing bigger or intenser than I experience in life. I am, what you would call, poor all round.’