I stopped. I had that distressful feeling I have always had with Margaret, of not being altogether sure she heard, of being doubtful if she understood. I perceived that once again I had struck at her and shattered a thousand unsubstantial pinnacles. And I couldn't get at her, to help her, or touch her mind! I stood up, and at my movement she moved. She produced a dainty little handkerchief, and made an effort to wipe her face with it, and held it to her eyes. “Oh, my Husband!” she sobbed.
“What do you mean to do?” she said, with her voice muffled by her handkerchief.
“We're going to end it,” I said.
Something gripped me tormentingly as I said that. I drew a chair beside her and sat down. “You and I, Margaret, have been partners,” I began. “We've built up this life of ours together; I couldn't have done it without you. We've made a position, created a work—”
She shook her head. “You,” she said.
“You helping. I don't want to shatter it—if you don't want it shattered. I can't leave my work. I can't leave you. I want you to have—all that you have ever had. I've never meant to rob you. I've made an immense and tragic blunder. You don't know how things took us, how different they seemed! My character and accident have conspired—We'll pay—in ourselves, not in our public service.”
I halted again. Margaret remained very still.
“I want you to understand that the thing is at an end. It is definitely at an end. We—we talked—yesterday. We mean to end it altogether.” I clenched my hands. “She's—she's going to marry Arnold Shoesmith.”
I wasn't looking now at Margaret any more, but I heard the rustle of her movement as she turned on me.
“It's all right,” I said, clinging to my explanation. “We're doing nothing shabby. He knows. He will. It's all as right—as things can be now. We're not cheating any one, Margaret. We're doing things straight—now. Of course, you know.... We shall—we shall have to make sacrifices. Give things up pretty completely. Very completely.... We shall have not to see each other for a time, you know. Perhaps not a long time. Two or three years. Or write—or just any of that sort of thing ever—”