Juliet raises her head and dries her eyes. She is a proud woman and a high-spirited one, and never disposed to take a rebuff meekly.
‘I am a fool,’ she answers. ‘Any woman would be a fool who wasted a regret upon such an icicle as you are. I hope to Heaven you may get your appointment and go out to the Brazils, and never come back again; for the less I see and hear of you the better.’
‘Just what I said,’ remarks her husband indifferently. ‘You are as sick of me as I am of you, and it’s of no use disguising the truth from one another.’
‘There was a time when you thought nothing too good to say of me,’ she cries, hysterically.
‘Was there? Well, you can’t expect such things to last for ever, and you have really made my life such a hell to me of late that you can’t be surprised if I look forward to any change as a blessing.’
‘Oh! It has come to that, has it—that you want to get rid of me? Why don’t you put the finishing stroke to your cruelty and say at once that you hate me?’
‘I am afraid you are making me do something very much like it.’
‘The truth is, you are tired of me, Roland! It is nursing your children and trying out of our scanty income to provide for your wants that has brought me down to what I am, and since I have ceased to please your eyes, I have wearied out your fancy.’
‘Yes! my dear,’ he says, with provoking nonchalance. ‘You are quite right; I am very tired of you, and particularly at this moment. Suppose you leave me to my writing, and go to bed.’