“Oh! we needn’t go into that,” she answered. “One doesn’t really expect to see anything of one’s husband in these modern times, it isn’t the thing!”
He didn’t remind her that during the last fifteen years she hadn’t cared very much whether he were lonely or not. He looked at her gravely.
“Don’t let’s start that all over again now,” he said. “I would have spent the whole time with you if you hadn’t so obviously shown me that you didn’t want me. You can hardly have forgotten already what you said the other day.”
“Do you think that’s quite true?” she said, looking up at him; she was gripping the bedclothes in her hands. “Don’t you think that it’s a little bit because there’s some one else who did, or rather does, want you?”
“What do you mean?” he said, coming towards her bed. She was suddenly frightened. This was the man whom she had seen for the first time on that first evening at dinner, some one she had never known before.
“I mean what I say,” she answered. “How long do you suppose that I intend to stand this sort of thing? You leave me deliberately alone; I don’t know what you do with your days, or your evenings, neither does anyone else. I’m not going to be made a laughing-stock of in the hotel; all those beastly women . . .” She could scarcely speak for rage.
“There is nothing to talk about,” he answered sternly. “It’s only your own imagination. At any rate, we are not going to have a scene now, nor ever again, as far as that goes. I’m sick of them.”
“Well,” she answered furiously, “if you think I’m going to sit there and let myself be made a fool of and say nothing you’re mightily mistaken; I’ve had enough of it.”
“And so have I,” he answered quietly. “If you’re tired of this place we’ll go away somewhere else, wherever you please; perhaps it would be a good thing. This place seems to have upset you altogether. Perhaps after all it would be the best thing. It would cut all the knots and end all these worries.”
But she laughed scornfully. “Oh! no, thank you. I like the place well enough. Only you must be a little more careful. And if you think——”