“Very well, I will tell you. A week ago you said some words to me. You put a question to me which I promised to answer at my own time. You said, 'Will you force me to wish that I had never seen you?' You said that to me—you—Claude Westwood—to me.”
“I admit that I was cruel—I know that I was cruel.”
“Oh no; you were not cruel. You have shown me since your return that you regard women as too humble an organisation to be susceptible of great suffering. You are a scientific man, and one of your theories is that the lower in the scheme of creation is any form of life, the less capable it is of suffering. You cleave your worm in twain—there is a little wriggle—no more—each half goes off quite briskly in its own way. You chop off a lizard's tail without causing it any particular inconvenience; I wonder if you think of me as a little better than the worm, a little higher than the lizard. How could any man say words of such cruelty to a woman whom he had once promised to love, if he had not believed her to be dead to all sense of suffering?”
She stood before him with her hands clenched and her eyes flashing; but only for a few moments. Then she made a gesture of contempt—she gave a little shudder as she turned away from him.
He remained motionless for a brief space, then went without a word to the door. The sound of his fingers on the handle caused her to look round.
“Don't go away for a moment,” she said. “You will pardon that tirade of mine, I am sure. I don't know how it was forced from me. I shall not be so foolish again.”
“I think I had better go: you are scarcely yourself to-night,” said he.
“Scarcely myself? Well, perhaps I am not. I must confess that that outburst of mine surprised me. It will not occur again, I promise you.”
“I think I had better leave you.”
He still stood at the door. In his voice there was again a tone of reproach. There was some sadness in the little shake of his head, as though he meant to suggest that he was greatly pained at not being able to trust her.