Eugénie's hand grasped the chair near her, she pressed her fingers tightly into its velvet cushions, as though in repressed anger.
"Not?"
"No. The plan was of your father's making, so be it. He is doubtless right in requiring that his daughter, who will shortly be his altogether again, should be placed in safety and protected from those rough scenes and excesses which, in all probability, may take place here. I am quite of his opinion, and I agree fully to to-morrow's separation."
She raised her head and said with spirit,
"And I only agreed to it when I thought it was your wish. I cannot yield in this matter to my father's will alone. I have taken upon myself the duties of your wife, in the sight of the world at least, and, so far, I shall fulfil them. They command me not to desert you basely in the face of that which threatens you, but to remain at your side until the worst has been tided over, and the date originally fixed for our parting has come. Then I will go, and not before."
"Not if I expressly ask you to do so?"
"Arthur!"
He stood half turning from her, and crushing in his hand a paper he had mechanically taken up from his bureau. The self-control he had regained by so violent an effort was not proof against that look and tone.
"I have begged you once already not to play at generosity with me. I have no liking for such scenes. Duties! It may be the duty of a woman, who has willingly given her husband both hand and heart, to stay by him and share his misfortune, perhaps his ruin, as she has shared his prosperity. That is not our case. We have no duties to each other, for we never had any rights one upon the other. The only thing which I could offer you in our compulsory union was the possibility of dissolving it; it has been dissolved from the moment that we decided upon a separation. That is my answer to the offer you have made me."
Eugénie's dark eyes were still fixed on his face. The tell-tale lightning-like flash, which at times seemed to discover the unknown depths of his being, came not to-day, and yet to-day of all days did she long to conjure it up at any cost.