"What I have to say to you," she said, "will make you very angry; but I hope you will have the patience to listen to me, because it must be said."
He did not answer. He merely stooped and stirred the fire to a higher blaze, then turned and looked at her with those ever-watching eyes of his.
Nan's hands were clenched unconsciously. She was making the greatest effort of her life.
"It has come to this," she said, forcing herself with all her quivering strength to speak quietly. "I do not wish to be your wife. I have realized for some time that my marriage was a mistake, and I thought it possible, I hoped with all my heart, that you would see it, too. I suppose, by your coming back in this way, that you have not yet done so?"
He was standing very quietly before her with his hands behind him. Notwithstanding her wild misgiving, she could not see that he was in any way angered by her words. He seemed to observe her with a grave interest. That was all.
A tremor of passion went through her. His passivity was not to be borne. In some curious fashion it hurt her. She felt as though she were beating and bruising herself against bars of iron.
"Surely," she said, and her voice shook in spite of her utmost effort to control it—"surely you must see that you are asking of me more than I can possibly give. I own that I am—nominally—your wife, but I realize now that I can never be anything more to you than that. I cannot go away with you. I can never make my home with you. I married you upon impulse. I did you a great wrong, but you will admit that you hurried me into it. And now that—that my eyes are open, I find that I cannot go on. Would it—would it—" She was faltering under that unchanging gaze, but she compelled herself to utter the question—"be quite impossible to—to get a separation?"
"Quite," said Piet.
He did not raise his voice, but she shrank at the brief word, shrank uncontrollably as if he had struck her.
He went on quite steadily, but his eyes gave her no rest. They seemed to her to gleam red in the glancing firelight.