"It does not suit me to leave the neighbourhood at present," she said calmly.
If she had been a man Ray would have struck her. I could see his white teeth clenched fiercely together.
"It does not suit me," he said, in a low tone vibrate with suppressed passion, "to have you here. You are a plague spot upon the place. You have been a plague spot all your life. Whatever you touch you corrupt."
She shrank away for a moment. After all, she was a woman, and I hated
Ray for his brutality.
"What a butcher you are!" she said, looking at him curiously. "If ever you should marry—God help the woman."
"There are women and women," he answered roughly. "As for you, you do not count in the sex at all."
She turned away from him with a little shudder, and for the first time during the interview she hid her face in her hands. It was all I could do to avoid speech.
"Come," he said, "do you agree? Will you leave this place? I promise you that your schemes here at any rate are at an end."
She turned to me. Perhaps something in my face had spoken the sympathy which I could not wholly suppress.
"Guy," she said, "I want to be rid of this man, because every word he speaks—hurts. But I cannot even look at him any more. At this war of words he has won. I am beaten. I admit it. I am crushed. I am not going away. I spoke truthfully when I said that I came to England in search of your father. We may both of us be the creatures that man would have you believe, but we have been husband and wife for eighteen years, and it is my duty to find out what has become of him. Therefore I stay."