‘You have not forgotten that injury, Carinthia?’
‘I am a mother.’
‘By all the saints! you hit hard. Justly. Not you. Our deeds are the hard hitters. We learn when they begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke! Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the ground—no recovery of it, none! That must be what your father meant. I can’t regret you are a mother. We have a son, a bond. How can I describe the man I was!’ he muttered,—‘possessed! sort of werewolf! You are my wife?’
‘I was married to you, my lord.’
‘It’s a tie of a kind.’
‘It binds me.’
‘Obey, you said.’
‘Obey it. I do.’
‘You consider it holy?’
‘My father and my mother spoke to me of the marriage-tie. I read the service before I stood at the altar. It is holy. It is dreadful. I will be true to it.’