“Yes, you are going—no doubt of that. But not before you have answered my questions. Whether with lies or not doesn’t matter much. You shall give your own account of what you have been doing.”
Both panting as if after some supreme effort of their physical force, they stood and looked at each other. Each to the other’s eyes was incredibly transformed. Monica could not have imagined such brutal ferocity in her husband’s face, and she herself had a wild recklessness in her eyes, a scorn and abhorrence in all the lines of her countenance, which made Widdowson feel as if a stranger were before him.
“I shall answer no question whatever,” Monica replied. “All I want is to leave your house, and never see you again.”
He regretted what he had done. The result of the first day’s espionage being a piece of evidence so incomplete, he had hoped to command himself until more solid proof of his wife’s guilt were forthcoming. But jealousy was too strong for such prudence, and the sight of Monica as she uttered her falsehood made a mere madman of him. Predisposed to believe a story of this kind, he could not reason as he might have done if fear of Barfoot had never entered his thoughts. The whole course of dishonour seemed so clear; he traced it from Monica’s earliest meetings with Barfoot at Chelsea. Wavering between the impulse to cast off his wife with every circumstance of public shame, and the piteous desire to arrest her on her path of destruction, he rushed into a middle course, compatible with neither of these intentions. If at this stage he chose to tell Monica what had come to his knowledge, it should have been done with the sternest calm, with dignity capable of shaming her guilt. As it was, he had spoilt his chances in every direction. Perhaps Monica understood this; he had begun to esteem her a mistress in craft and intrigue.
“You say you were never at that man’s rooms before to-day?” he asked in a lower voice.
“What I have said you must take the trouble to recollect. I shall answer no question.”
Again the impulse assailed him to wring confession from her by terror. He took a step forward, the demon in his face. Monica in that moment leapt past him, and reached the door of the room before he could stop her.
“Stay where you are!” she cried, “If your hands touch me again I shall call for help until someone comes up. I won’t endure your touch!”
“Do you pretend you are innocent of any crime against me?”
“I am not what you called me. Explain everything as you like. I will explain nothing. I want only to be free from you.”