“I sha’n’t give you a chance, because I have some very important business in London, and my duty as your nurse is over, and to-morrow I shall go to town.”
“And when are you coming back?”—excitedly.
She did not answer.
“When do you mean to come back, I say?” he repeated, in a louder voice.
Still no answer. Harry clutched his wife’s arm.
“Then I shall not let you go! You are not my nurse; you are my wife, and I forbid you to leave me again—do you hear? What is this business you speak of? What is it? I have a right to know—and I will know!”
Annie did not attempt to remove her arm from his grasp, but looked slowly up at him with a steady, cold, firm expression in her dark eyes, which silenced him even before she spoke:
“You have a right to know, and you shall know. I can’t tell you all now, but just this. For four years, during which you never took the trouble to find out whether I was starving—and I was not so very far off that sometimes—I have been working to lay the foundation of a career for myself—an honorable career, I need not say, even to you. I have been put back a little, just as I was going to make a great stride forward, by coming to nurse you. I have fulfilled that duty now, and, now you are well, I am only wasting my time here. You must let me go. I will come back when you please, if I can, and I will let you know everything you wish. But my presence, now you are all going to be together again, would only irritate you—already it seems to be the cause of your quarreling with William. You will be disgusted again with my ‘learned airs,’ and with my preaching—for I shall not be able to keep myself from uttering useless remonstrances when I see you going on in your old way, as I know you will, and bringing back the fever, and making yourself ill again——”
“But, if I make myself ill again, you will have to nurse me.”
“Indeed, you are mistaken!” answered Annie, raising her eyes to his with spirit. “If now, after being warned, you choose, rashly, to put your life in danger, and to undo all the good our constant watching and nursing have done you, I shall not consider myself bound to sacrifice myself any longer to a man who could be guilty of such foolish and selfish conduct, whether he is my husband or not.”