"So you wish our engagement at an end?" says Stephen, quite calmly, in a tone that might almost be termed mechanical.
He waits remorselessly for an answer.
"I—you—I didn't tell you so," stammers Dulce.
"No prevarications, please. There has been quite enough deception of late." Dulce looks at him curiously. "Let us adhere to the plain truth now at least. This is how the case stands. You never loved me; and now your cousin has returned you find you do love him; that all your former professions of hatred toward him were just so much air—or, let us say, so much wounded vanity. You would be released from me. You would gladly forget I ever played even a small part in the drama of your life. Is not all this true?"
For the second time this afternoon speech deserts Dulce. She grows very white, but answer she has none.
"I understand your silence to mean yes," goes on Stephen, in the same monotonous tone he had just used, out of which every particle of feeling has been absolutely banished. "It would, let me say, have saved you much discomfort, and your cousin some useless traveling, if you had discovered your passion for him sooner." At this Dulce draws her breath quickly, and throws up her head with a haughty gesture. Very few women like being told they entertain a passion for a man, no matter how devotedly they adore him.
Mr. Gower, taking no notice of her silent protest, goes on slowly.
"What your weakness and foolish pride have cost me," he says, "goes for nothing."
There is something in his face now that makes Dulce sorry for him. It is a want of hope. His eyes, too, look sunk and wearied as if from continued want of sleep.
"If by my reprehensible pride and weakness, of which you justly accuse me, I have caused you pain—" she begins tremulously, but he stops her at once.