“Those are very serious words, my dear,” he said, trying to hide his anger. “Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?”
“Please, George—let me write it to you, if you must have it. Spare me. It is so hard to speak honestly. Please!”
“If you can find the courage to speak, I can find the patience to listen,” he said with sarcasm. “As we are both intelligent and sensible, I don’t think you need be alarmed about there being a ‘scene.’ What is the matter, Emily? Let us clear the air.”
“We’ve changed—that’s all. I’m not regretting what we did. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. But—we’ve changed.”
“I have not changed. I’m the same now as then, except that I appreciate you more than I did at first. Month by month you’ve grown dearer to me. And——”
“Well, then, it is I who have changed,” she interrupted, desperately. “It’s not strange, is it, George? I was, in a way, inexperienced when we were married, though I didn’t think so. And life looks very different to me now.” She could not go on without telling him that she had found him out, without telling him how he had shrivelled and shrunk until the garb of the ideal in which she had once clothed him was now a giant’s suit upon a pigmy—pitiful, ridiculous. “How can I help it that my mind has changed? I thought so and so—I no longer think so and so. Put yourself in my place, dear—the same thing might have happened to you about me.”
Many times the very same ideas had formed in his mind as he had exhausted his interest in one woman after another. They were familiar to him—these ideas. And how they mocked him now! It seemed incredible that he, hitherto always the one who had broken it off, should be in this humiliating position.
“It’s all due to that absurd plan of ours,” he said bitterly. “If we had gone about marriage in a sensible way, we should have grown together. As it is, you’ve exaggerated trifles into mountains and are letting them crush our happiness to death.” His tone became an appeal. “Emily—my dear—my wife—you must not!”
She did not answer. “If we’d lived together I’d have found him out just the same—more quickly,” she thought. “And either I’d have degraded myself through timidity and dependence, or else I’d have left him.”
“You admit that our plan has been a failure?” he went on.