"I told her it was all up; and she kept her nerve too. A funny sort of scene for any onlooker, to watch a newly-married man and woman starting on their honeymoon and lost to all but a future bargain. Guard looked in and had a laugh sometimes when the train stopped, and we ruled our faces and grinned back at him.
"She began by trying hard to change me. She poured out a flood of reasons; she used her quick brains as she'd never used them afore. But she kept as keen and cool as a dealer to market, and when she found I wasn't going on with it, she bided still a bit and then asked me what I was going to do.
"That I couldn't tell her for the minute. 'Us'll begin at the beginning,' I said, 'and have every step clear. You've got my name now, and you're my wife in the law, and you've got your rights. And I shan't come between you and them. But my love for you is dead. I don't hate you, because, I suppose, women are mostly built like you and I won't waste my strength hating you. You've gone. You're less to me now than the trees passing the window. You'll live your life and I'll live mine,' I said to her; 'but you're outside mine in future and I'm outside yours.'
"'That can't be,' she said. 'I've got a claim, and if you turn me down, though I pray to God you won't—but if you do, you've got to think of my future as well as your own.' I granted that and promised her she need not trouble for herself. Being what I am, for good or evil, I saw very quick this blow would fall on me, not her. She wouldn't miss me so long as everything else was all right, and my feelings were such that I wasn't particular mindful of myself, or my ruined hopes at that minute. I got a sudden, fierce longing to cut a loss and be out of it. And that first driving impulse in me—to get away from her and breathe clean air—stuck to me after twenty-four hours had passed. Once knowing what she'd been, my love for her went out like a candle. That may be curious, but so it was. I didn't fight myself over it, or weaken, or hunger for her back. Never once did I. She was gone and couldn't have been more gone if she'd dropped dead at my feet. All my passion was a passion to get out of her sight.
"She tried with every bit of her cleverness to change me. Yes, she tried hard, and I saw the wonder of her brains as I'd never even yet seen them. She made a lot clear. She scorned the thing we call sin. She said to give a man what she'd given was no more than to give another woman's baby a drink from her breast if it was thirsty. She talked like that. She said she never loved the man as she loved me, and she prayed very earnest indeed for me to take a higher line and not be paltry. But it was all wind in the trees for me and didn't shake me by a hair."
He stopped for a moment and Dinah asked him a question. She had followed him word by word, her mouth open, her eyes fixed upon his face.
"If she'd told you before instead of after, would it have made a difference?"
"Yes, it would," he said. "God's my judge, it would have made all the difference between wanting her and loathing her. I'm the sort of man that could no more have brooked it than I'd willingly touch a foul thing. That may be silliness and a narrow understanding of life. Where women are concerned, I may have wanted better bread than is made of wheat—I don't know and I don't care; but that's me. And nothing could change me. She tried hard enough—part for my own sake, I do believe, and part for hers. She was wonderful and I'll grant it. She knew me well enough to waste not a minute of her time in coaxing, or tears, or any foolery. She just kept to the argument as close and keen as a man, and if she was feeling as much as me, which ain't likely, she certainly didn't show it.
"She said a strange thing—bare-faced it seemed to me then, but I dare say in strict fairness to her, I might have been shook by it. She reminded me that it was what that blasted, rich man had taught her had made her what she was. She said he'd lifted her above her class and woke up her brains and educated her with books and lessons; and that what had drawn me was just what she had to thank him for. She said, 'You'd never have looked at me twice for myself. A pretty face means nothing to you. It was my sharpened sense took you; and now you turn round and fling me off for just what made you marry me.' Cunning as a snake she was—the wisdom and the poison both. Or so it seemed to me. But what she said didn't alter the facts. Nothing could alter them, and I wasn't built to take any man's leavings.
"She worked at me till we were very nearly to Exeter. Then she stopped and said it was up to me to say what I intended. And I told her as to that she needn't fear, because I'd do all that was right, and more. Her talk, you see, had done this much. It made me understand that from her point of view—hateful though it was—she had her rights. And so I bade her take her luggage to one inn and I'd go to another; and next day I wrote to her that she'd get a letter from me when I'd looked all round and decided what was proper to do. She left me still hoping; I could see that. But she didn't hope no more when she got my letter."