For a full minute Rylton remains silent. The mind is a strange thing, not to be controlled, full of vagaries, and now, for no reason whatever, as it seems to him, it has run back to his wedding morning. Is this the careless, idle, little tomboy who had stood before the altar—the little girl he had assured himself he could mould to his will?
"You forget," says he coldly, "that you are married to me. It is not so simple a matter as you seem to imagine for a wife to throw off her marriage yoke."
"Yoke! What a good word that is!" says Tita, with the air of one making a discovery. Then lightly, "Pouf! Nonsense! I'll show you how easy it is! And as for that——" Again her mood changes. "Don't go in for that sort of thing," says she contemptuously. "Be honest with me now, at the last. You know you will be as glad to get rid of me, as I shall be to be rid of you."
"Speak for yourself," says Rylton slowly. His eyes are on the ground. "I have not said I shall be glad to get rid of you."
"No, I have said it for you. I have befriended you to the very end; and if you will be a hypocrite, why—be it!" cries she gaily.
She throws up her hands with an airy little gesture, full of grace, and anger, and something else difficult to describe, but that certainly is devoid of any sort of mirth.
"Hypocrite or not, remember this," says Maurice, "it is you who have decided on a separation."
"Yes; I—I." She bursts out laughing. "'Alone I did it!' To-day I set you free!"
"Free!"
"Ah, not so free as I would make you!" shaking her head.