“And do you remember how you said that if you’d only realised what you were coming to, nothing would have made you come,” he continued deliberately,—“neither love nor friendship, nor duty nor regret; and that if you had been a man, you would have preferred to starve in your old career rather than settle in such a land as this?”
“Yes, yes,” she broke in, “and I meant every word I said.”
“And do you remember how you asked me what it was we found to like in the life,” he continued, “and whether we would not throw it up to-morrow if we could, and what in the name of heaven we got in exchange for all we had lost?”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” she said breathlessly; “and do you remember what you said then about the women?”
“I said that we men gained in every particular, and that it was a life for men and not for women,” he answered.
“Ah, but there was something else,” she said, almost desperately. “You said they came off badly here, but that their one salvation was to love passionately, desperately—”
“And if I did say so,” he said, turning to her fiercely, “what has that to do with you and me?”
There was no mistaking the ring of contempt in his voice. She smarted in every fibre of her, and instantly gathered herself together.
“No, you are right,” she said, with a quick nervous laugh. “It has not anything to do with you and me.”
He had struck a match as she spoke, and lit the lamp, and she came from the window where she had been standing, and pushed into a heap the letters and papers which were scattered over the table.