"If you really mean," she hastened on, "that you're acting as you have thus far because it's the right way to act, because the way men usually act is wrong and degrades them, why, you'll stop trying to convince me that you're giving a wonderful exhibition of gracious generosity."
"I had no such intention."
"Then why do you treat me as if I were an object of charity?"
"You can hardly expect me to treat you as if you had done something noble."
"You say I'm not a bad woman."
They looked at each other in silence. "No, you are not," he said. "You have acted like a bad woman, but you are not a bad woman."
"Then," she went on slowly, never taking her grave, earnest eyes from his, "I want you to ask yourself how it happens that the girl who, you said last night, was good, the girl who loved you when she married you, has become the woman you are condemning?"
A long silence. He looked away, looked again—and his gaze remained fixed upon her face. Then, in a low, hesitating voice: "Well—how did it happen?"
"Because you did not love me."
"You know better than that," he cried. "I've never given any woman but you a thought. I've never—" He broke off abruptly, grew angry. "But you're simply trying to improve your position by putting me on the defensive. And I ask you again not to goad me——"