"I'm unhappy," she said, "in my married life, miserably unhappy, and entirely, utterly by my own fault. I've tried, or fancied that I've tried. I've done what I've thought was my best—Things have happened now, at last, that have made it impossible—I can't go on any longer."
She spoke as though she were, very urgently, endeavouring to deliver a fair honest statement. There was in her voice a note that showed that life had truly, of late, been very hard for her—
"I married, in the beginning, for a wrong reason. I knew then that I didn't love my husband. I married because I wanted to escape. I had always hated my grandmother and she had always hated me—you knew that, Miss Rand; everyone who had anything to do with us knew it. She had done more than hate me, she had made me frightened—frightened of life and people. Someone came along who was kind and easy and comfortable, and everyone said it would be a good thing, and so I, not because I loved him, but because I wanted to escape from my grandmother, married him. Because I had to silence everything that was honest in me I'm paying now."
"It was all quite natural," Lizzie said. "Most women would have done the same."
"It was horrible from the beginning; I found that I had not escaped from my grandmother at all. She had arranged the marriage and now was always, and in some curious way, influencing it.
"I soon saw what I had done—that I had been false to myself and therefore false to everything else. My husband was in love with me—He was very patient and good to me, but I found that everything that I did or thought or said in connection with my husband was false. What made it so hard was that I was, and I am, very fond of him. My training—the training of all our family had always been—to learn how to be sham, so that one's real self never appeared all one's life. It ought to have been easy enough—but I've never been like one of my family—I'd always been different.
"I had determined that this year I would do my duty to Roddy—But it's harder than any determination can govern. It's bad for Roddy, it's deadly for me ... at last things have happened that have made it impossible for me—I've made up my mind this morning. I must leave Roddy, let him divorce me, give him a better chance with someone else."
She spoke with the desperate immediate determination of youth, staring in front of her, her hands clenched. Like flame at Lizzie's heart leapt this knowledge.
"She and Breton are going—only you can stop them—she and Breton."
"Don't you think," said Lizzie, "a little of your husband?"