‘Yes, if this is the kind of life you offer me.’
‘You would be more ashamed to share your husband’s misfortunes than to declare to everyone that you had deserted him?’
‘I shall “declare to everyone” the simple truth. You have the opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation. You refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a lower rank of life. I can’t and won’t consent to that. The disgrace is yours; it’s fortunate for me that I have a decent home to go to.’
‘Fortunate for you!—you make yourself unutterably contemptible. I have done nothing that justifies you in leaving me. It is for me to judge what I can do and what I can’t. A good woman would see no degradation in what I ask of you. But to run away from me just because I am poorer than you ever thought I should be—’
He was incoherent. A thousand passionate things that he wished to say clashed together in his mind and confused his speech. Defeated in the attempt to act like a strong man, he could not yet recover standing-ground, knew not how to tone his utterances.
‘Yes, of course, that’s how you will put it,’ said Amy. ‘That’s how you will represent me to your friends. My friends will see it in a different light.’
‘They will regard you as a martyr?’
‘No one shall make a martyr of me, you may be sure. I was unfortunate enough to marry a man who had no delicacy, no regard for my feelings.—I am not the first woman who has made a mistake of this kind.’
‘No delicacy? No regard for your feelings?—Have I always utterly misunderstood you? Or has poverty changed you to a woman I can’t recognise?’
He came nearer, and gazed desperately into her face. Not a muscle of it showed susceptibility to the old influences.