"I understand,"—bitterly: "you only meant it. Well, if you are so unhappy with me, and if—if you wish for a separation, I think I can manage it for you. I have no desire whatever"—coldly—"to keep you with me against your will."
"And have all the world talking?" exclaims she, hastily. "No. In such a case the woman goes to the wall: the man is never in fault. Things must now remain as they are. But this one last thing you can do for me. As far as is possible, let us live as utter strangers to each other."
"It shall be just as you please," returns he, haughtily.
Day by day the dark cloud that separates them widens and deepens, drifting them farther and farther apart, until it seems almost impossible that they shall ever come together again.
Dorian grows moody and irritable, and nurses his wrongs in sullen morbid silence. He will shoot whole days without a companion, or go for long purposeless rides across country, only to return at nightfall weary and sick at heart.
"Grief is a stone that bears one down." To Dorian, all the world seems going wrong; his whole life is a failure. The two beings he loves most on earth—Lord Sartoris and his wife—distrust him, and willingly lend an open ear to the shameless story unlucky Fate has coined for him.
As for Georgie, she grows pale and thin, and altogether unlike herself. From being a gay, merry, happy little girl, with "the sun upon her heart," as Bailey so sweetly expresses it, she has changed into a woman, cold and self-contained, with a manner full of settled reserve.
Now and again small scenes occur between them that only render matters more intolerable. For instance, coming into the breakfast-room one morning, Georgie, meeting the man who brings the letters, takes them from him, and, dividing them, comes upon one directed to Dorian, in an unmistakable woman's hand, bearing the London post-mark, which she throws across the table to her husband.
Something in the quickness of her action makes him raise his head to look at her. Catching the expression of her eyes, he sees that they are full of passionate distrust, and at once reads her thoughts aright. His brow darkens; and, rising, he goes over to her, and takes her hands in his, not with a desire to conciliate, but most untenderly.