"It is impossible you can accuse me of this thing," he says, his voice low and angry.
"Few things are impossible," returns she, with cold disdain. "Remove your hands, Dorian: they hurt me."
"At least you shall be convinced that in this instance, as in all the others, you have wronged me."
Still holding her hands, he compels her to listen to him while he reads aloud a letter from the wife of one of his tenants who has gone to town on law business and who has written to him on the matter.
Such scenes only help to make more wide the breach between them. Perhaps, had Georgie learned to love her husband before her marriage, all might have been well; but the vague feeling of regard she had entertained for him (that, during the early days of their wedded life, had been slowly ripening into honest love, not having had time to perfect itself) at the first check had given in, and fallen—hurt to death—beneath the terrible attack it had sustained.
She fights and battles with herself at times, and, with passionate earnestness, tries to live down the growing emptiness of heart that is withering her young life. All night long sometimes she lies awake, waiting wearily for the dawn, and longing prayerfully for some change in her present stagnation.
And, even if she can summon sleep to her aid, small is the benefit she derives from it. Bad dreams, and sad as bad, harass and perplex her, until she is thankful when her lids unclose and she feels at least she is free of the horrors that threatened her a moment since.
"Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe;
But, 'tis the happy that have called thee so!"