She said:
"Oh no. I shall be quite all right soon. I'm going to get up in about half an hour."
"But then how shall you get out of going to Princetown?"
"Oh! Edwin! I must go. I told them I should go."
He was astounded. There was no end to her incalculability,--no end! His resentment was violent. He stood right away from her.
"'Told them you should go'!" he exclaimed. "What in the name of heaven does that matter? Are you absolutely mad?"
She stiffened. Her features hardened. In the midst of her terrible relief as to the fate of George Cannon and of her equal terrible excitement under the enigmatic and irresistible mesmerism of Dartmoor prison, she was desperate, and resentment against Edwin kindled deep within her. She felt the brute in him. She felt that he would never really understand. She felt all her weakness and all his strength, but she was determined. At bottom she knew well that her weakness was the stronger.
"I must go!" she repeated.
"It's nothing but morbidness!" he said savagely. "Morbidness! ... Well, I shan't have it. I shan't let you go. And that's flat."
She kept silent. Frightfully disturbed, cursing women, forgetting utterly in a moment his sublime resolves, Edwin descended to breakfast in the large, strange house. Existence was monstrous.