"No? And yet you ask a woman for whom you scarcely bear a passing affection to run away with you, to defy public opinion for your sake, and so forth. You should advise her to count the world well lost for love—such love as yours! You pour every bit of the old rubbish into one's ears, and yet—" She stops abruptly. A very storm of anger and grief and despair is shaking her to her heart's core.
"Well?" says he, still frowning.
"What have you to offer me in exchange for all you ask me to give? A heart filled with thoughts of another! No more!—--"
"If you persist in thinking——"
"Why should I not think it? When I tell you there is danger of my hating you, as your wife might—perhaps—hate you—your first thought is for her! 'You think then that she hates me'?" (She imitates the anxiety of his tone with angry truthfulness.) "Not one word of horror at the thought that I might hate you six months hence."
"Perhaps I did not believe you would," says he, with some embarrassment.
"Ah! That is so like a man! You think, don't you, that you were made to be loved? There, go! Leave me!"
He would have spoken to her again, but she rejects the idea with such bitterness that he is necessarily silent. She has covered her face with her hands. Presently she is alone.