"Because you seem to be in error and to fancy that I shall hold you all your life long in chains which, truly, are as oppressive to me as they ever were to you."
His tone was cold in the extreme, but Eugénie looked quickly up at him. She could read nothing in his countenance, however. Why were those eyes instantly veiled whenever she attempted to search their meaning? Was it that they would not submit to be questioned, or that they feared to betray themselves?
"You allude to--to a separation?"
"Do you imagine I could look upon the union between us as lasting after the expression of--of esteem, which I was forced to hear from your mouth on that first evening?"
Eugénie was silent.
Over their heads the pine-branches rustled and waved hither and thither once more. The voice of the forest, exhorting, remonstrating, was wafted down to this wedded pair about to utter the word which should separate them, but neither he nor she would understand the meaning.
"We are neither of us free enough to lay all considerations on one side," continued Arthur, in the same tone. "Your father and mine are both too well known, each in his own sphere, our marriage attracted too much attention for us to be able to dissolve it immediately, without affording inexhaustible matter for gossip to the whole town, and making ourselves ridiculous as the hero and heroine of a hundred stories. People do not separate after four-and-twenty hours, or even after a week, without some appreciable cause; for appearances' sake they bear with one another for a year or so, in order to declare, with some show of likelihood, that there is incompatibility of temper. I had hoped we could have borne to live so long together, but it seems that our strength is not equal to the task. If we go on in this way, we shall both of us succumb."
The arm which Eugénie had wound round the trunk of the great tree trembled slightly, but her voice was steady as she answered.
"I do not succumb so easily when I have once taken a task upon me; and, as for you, I really did not think you were in the least affected by our painful position."
In his brown eyes there flashed once more that rapid lightning-like gleam which vanished as quickly, leaving no trace behind it. His look was quiet and expressionless as before, when he replied after a short pause.