"Ancram, say one kind word to me!"
"Good God, Castalia! How can you be so exasperatingly childish?"
"One word! Say you love me a little still! Say you did love me when you married me! Don't let me believe that I have been a miserable dupe all along."
She no longer refused point-blank to obey him. She was bending into her old attitude of submission to his wishes. His ascendancy over her was paramount still. But she had made herself thoroughly obnoxious to him, and must be punished. Algernon's resentments were neither quick nor numerous, but they were lasting. His distaste for certain temperaments was profound. Castalia's intensity of emotion, and her ungoverned way of showing it, roused a sense of antagonism in him, which came nearer to passion than anything he had ever felt. With the sure instinct of cruelty, he confronted her wild, eager, supplicating face with a hard, cold, sarcastic smile, and a slight shrug. A blow from his hand would have been tender by comparison. Then he pulled out his watch and said, "How long do you intend this performance to last?" in the quietest voice in the world. And all the while he was in a white heat of anger, as I have said.
"Oh, Ancram! Oh, Ancram!" she cried. Then with a sudden change of tone, she said, "Will you promise me one thing? Will you swear never to see Rhoda Maxfield again? If you will do that, I will—I will—try to forgive you."
"To forgive me! Then you really have lost your senses?"
"No; I wish I had! I would rather be mad than know what I know. But think, Ancram, think well before you refuse me! This one thing is all I ask. Never see or speak to her, or write to her again—not even when I am dead! Swear it. I think if you swore it you would keep to it, wouldn't you? This one poor thing for all I have borne, for all I am willing to bear. I'll take that as a proof that you don't love her best. I'll be content with that. I'll give up everything else in the whole world. Only do this one thing for me, Ancram; I beg it on my knees!"
She did, indeed, fall on her knees as she spoke, and stretched out her clasped hands towards him. For one second their eyes met, then he turned his way and said, as quietly as ever, "I am going to Mr. and Miss Maxfield at once, with the most effectual apology which could be offered to them—namely, that you are a maniac, and in any case not responsible for your actions, nor to be treated like a rational being."
She staggered up to her feet. "Very well," she gasped out, "then I shall not spare you—nor her. I have had a letter from my uncle. He has told me what you accused me of. I went to the office. That man there told me the same. The notes that I paid away to Ravell—you 'wondered'—you were 'uneasy!' Why, you gave me them yourself. Oh, Ancram, how could you have the heart? I wish I was dead!"
"I wish to God you were!"