She had raised her veil to kiss him, and drew nearer with the timid and submissive air of an oft-beaten dog.
"How cruel you are towards me! How harshly you speak to me! What have I done to you? You cannot imagine how I suffer through you."
He growled: "Don't go on again in that style."
She was standing close to him, only waiting for a smile, a gesture, to throw herself into his arms, and murmured: "You should not have taken me to treat me thus, you should have left me sober-minded and happy as I was. Do you remember what you said to me in the church, and how you forced me into this house? And now, how do you speak to me? how do you receive me? Oh, God! oh, God! what pain you give me!"
He stamped his foot, and exclaimed, violently: "Ah, bosh! That's enough of it! I can't see you a moment without hearing all that foolery. One would really think that I had carried you off at twelve years of age, and that you were as ignorant as an angel. No, my dear, let us put things in their proper light; there was no seduction of a young girl in the business. You gave yourself to me at full years of discretion. I thank you. I am infinitely grateful to you, but I am not bound to be tied till death to your petticoat strings. You have a husband and I a wife. We are neither of us free. We indulged in a mutual caprice, and it is over."
"Oh, you are brutal, coarse, shameless," she said; "I was indeed no longer a young girl, but I had never loved, never faltered."
He cut her short with: "I know it. You have told me so twenty times. But you had had two children."
She drew back, exclaiming: "Oh, George, that is unworthy of you," and pressing her two hands to her heart, began to choke and sob.
When he saw the tears come he took his hat from the corner of the mantelpiece, saying: "Oh, you are going to cry, are you? Good-bye, then. So it was to show off in this way that you came here, eh?"
She had taken a step forward in order to bar the way, and quickly pulling out a handkerchief from her pocket, wiped her eyes with an abrupt movement. Her voice grew firmer by the effort of her will, as she said, in tones tremulous with pain, "No—I came to—to tell you some news—political news—to put you in the way of gaining fifty thousand francs—or even more—if you like."