"You are glad that I know?"
She had made sure that he would excuse himself blandly, with dignity, looking down upon her; and she had told herself that his carefully chosen words would flood her with contempt, the stronger because her own speech would prove halting and unrestrained.
"Yes, yes. I was a coward. I meant to tell you: I swear it, but I couldn't." Then he repeated the phrase he had used to Mark: "God knows it has been a secret sore."
"Why couldn't you tell me?" she asked.
"Because the right moment for doing so slipped by me."
"You married me under false pretences."
"Eh?"
"You wooed me with Mark's words."
"Wooed you with—Mark's—words? I can't follow you."
And here he stated a fact. He had neither the ability nor the intuition to follow a woman down the tortuous path of her feelings and aspirations. But at this moment he became aware that something dreadful remained to be said. Betty's pale, haggard face, her trembling fingers, her panting bosom, revealed an agitation which communicated itself to him. Let us be fair to a man with inexorable limitations. He had always believed that Betty married him for love. And he too had married for love—and other things which he valued; but the other things without love would not have tempted him to a mere marriage of convenience. And marriage with Betty had seemed at the time and afterwards the one thing needful: rounding a life too square, lending colour and sparkle to a profession whose habit is sable. If at times he had been vouchsafed a glimpse of barriers between his wife and himself, he attributed these to difference of sex. But till this minute he had believed her love as much an inalienable possession as his name. There was no love in the face half turned from his.