She drew away her hand, but not unkindly. “I’m sorry—I am sorry, Henry. But you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“That what you ask is quite impossible—ever. I can’t go on ... in the old way....”
She saw his face working nervously. “In the old way? You mean—?” Before she could explain he hurried on with an increasing majesty of manner: “Don’t answer! I see—I understand. When you spoke of freedom just now I was misled for a moment—I frankly own I was—into thinking that, after your wretched marriage, you might prefer discreeter ties ... an apparent independence which would leave us both.... I say apparent, for on my side there has never been the least wish to conceal.... But if I was mistaken, if on the contrary what you wish is ... is to take advantage of your freedom to regularize our ... our attachment....”
She said nothing, not because she had any desire to have him complete the phrase, but because she found nothing to say. To all that concerned their common past she was aware of offering a numbed soul. But her silence evidently perplexed him, and in his perplexity he began to lose his footing, and to flounder in a sea of words.
“Lizzie! Do you hear me? If I was mistaken, I say—and I hope I’m not above owning that at times I may be mistaken; if I was—why, by God, my dear, no woman ever heard me speak the words before; but here I am to have and to hold, as the Book says! Why, hadn’t you realized it? Lizzie, look up—! I’m asking you to marry me.”
Still, for a moment, she made no reply, but stood gazing about her as if she had the sudden sense of unseen presences between them. At length she gave a faint laugh. It visibly ruffled her visitor.
“I’m not conscious,” he began again, “of having said anything particularly laughable—” He stopped and scrutinized her narrowly, as though checked by the thought that there might be something not quite normal.... Then, apparently reassured, he half-murmured his only French phrase: “La joie fait peur ... eh?”
She did not seem to hear. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, “but only at the coincidences of life. It was in this room that my husband asked me to marry him.”
“Ah?” Her suitor appeared politely doubtful of the good taste, or the opportunity, of producing this reminiscence. But he made another call on his magnanimity. “Really? But, I say, my dear, I couldn’t be expected to know it, could I? If I’d guessed that such a painful association—”