"But, Undine—dearest—bye and bye you'll feel differently—I know you will!"
"Differently? Differently? When? In a year? It TAKES a year—a whole year out of life! What do I care how I shall feel in a year?"
The chill of her tone struck in. This was more than a revolt of the nerves: it was a settled, a reasoned resentment. Ralph found himself groping for extenuations, evasions—anything to put a little warmth into her! "Who knows? Perhaps, after all, it's a mistake."
There was no answering light in her face. She turned her head from him wearily.
"Don't you think, dear, you may be mistaken?"
"Mistaken? How on earth can I be mistaken?"
Even in that moment of confusion he was struck by the cold competence of her tone, and wondered how she could be so sure.
"You mean you've asked—you've consulted—?" The irony of it took him by the throat. They were the very words he might have spoken in some miserable secret colloquy—the words he was speaking to his wife!
She repeated dully: "I know I'm not mistaken."
There was another long silence. Undine lay still, her eyes shut, drumming on the arm of the sofa with a restless hand. The other lay cold in Ralph's clasp, and through it there gradually stole to him the benumbing influence of the thoughts she was thinking: the sense of the approach of illness, anxiety, and expense, and of the general unnecessary disorganization of their lives.