“No; indeed I do not. But you are quite right that I find it hard to be friendly with you. Most earnestly I wish to be your friend—your true and faithful friend. But you won’t let me.”
“Friend!” he cried scornfully. “The woman who has become my wife ought to be something more than a friend, I should think. You have lost all love for me—there’s the misery.”
Monica could not reply. That word “love” had grown a weariness to her upon his lips. She did not love him; could not pretend to love him. Every day the distance between them widened, and when he took her in his arms she had to struggle with a sense of shrinking, of disgust. The union was unnatural; she felt herself constrained by a hateful force when he called upon her for the show of wifely tenderness. Yet how was she to utter this? The moment such a truth had passed her lips she must leave him. To declare that no trace of love remained in her heart, and still to live with him—that was impossible! The dark foresight of a necessity of parting from him corresponded in her to those lurid visions which at times shook Widdowson with a horrible temptation.
“You don’t love me,” he continued in harsh, choking tones. “You wish to be my friend. That’s how you try to compensate me for the loss of your love.”
He laughed with bitterness.
“When you say that,” Monica answered, “do you ever ask yourself whether you try to make me love you? Scenes like this are ruining my health. I have come to dread your talk. I have almost forgotten the sound of your voice when it isn’t either angry or complaining.”
Widdowson walked about the room, and a deep moan escaped him.
“That is why I have asked you to go away from here, Monica. We must have a new home if our life is to begin anew.”
“I have no faith in mere change of place. You would be the same man. If you cannot command your senseless jealousy here, you never would anywhere else.”
He made an effort to say something; seemed to abandon it; again tried, and spoke in a thick, unnatural voice.