[Comes to her.] Does love without respect count for very much? Would you like to go back to the old way—the way of petty tyranny—the way of the cowardly, unnecessary tear—the way of gaining your own ends at all costs—the way of being a spoilt child, instead of a thoughtful and considerate woman—the way of my own contemptible weakness?
Mrs. Parbury.
I never looked upon it in that light. I thought I was happy then.
Parbury.
Because you never dreamed that my love was beginning to wear badly.
Mrs. Parbury.
[Startled.] Clement! . . . Oh? [Goes to him.] Good God!
Parbury.
I don’t want ever to think or speak of it again; but to-day I must, for if we are honest with each other, we may be able in time to save ourselves from that most pitiable and hideous of all states of existence—what is called “a cat and dog life.” Have you never seen it—that domestic flower with the rotten heart? The thin outside petals of courtesy, of hollow words of endearment before others, mask the ugly truth from the casual and unobservant; but the intimate friends know, and the prying eyes of the spiteful are undeceived. That man and woman who appear in public wearing the veneered ghost of a smile, are walking in hell. Think of their private lives—the slow death of love; the hearts poisoned with bitterness; the ever-growing rancour; the bandied insolences; the swift thoughts, black as murder; the final dull monotony of aching hatred. Do you think such cases rare? Every rank of society has its examples. Do you think such a couple have deliberately sought their hell? Oh no; they may have started as fairly as we did. Their love has not been slain by a blow, it has been pecked to a cupboard skeleton by littlenesses—little jealousies, little selfishnesses, little insults, little tyrannies, little intolerances.
Mrs. Parbury.