He saw there was a cold light blazing in her and he began to grow miserably afraid.
"I tried very hard not to deceive you," he said. "God knows I tried. And it was because I couldn't go on with it that I went away and ... and never meant to see you again."
"I don't quite think that is an excuse."
Somehow the words seemed to goad him on to unknown perils. But he was in a quicksand, the ground was moving under his feet.
"You don't know what my life has been," he said desperately. "You don't know what a wife I married, you don't know anything about me, else you wouldn't be so hard."
She realized while he was speaking, realized with a kind of nausea, which came suddenly upon her, that all he said was true. There was a peculiar note creeping into his voice that assailed her fastidious ears like a sudden descent to a subterranean region which she knew to exist, but of which she had never had first-hand knowledge. The subtle change of tone was telling her as nothing else could have done that it was perfectly true that she knew neither what his life had been nor anything about him.
"Mary." In spite of an intense feeling for him it was beginning to make her wince to hear her name on his lips. "If you don't mind I think I'll tell you one or two things about my life and ... and how I came ... to get married."
"I think perhaps I would rather not know." It was not she who said that. Long generations of Pridmores and Colthursts had suddenly taken charge and had answered for her.
It was a tone he had never heard her use, not even at the dinner party at which she had discussed the question of divorce. It was almost as if she had hit him a blow and yet without intending to deal one. By this time he had grown so dazed and frightened that he had begun to lose his head.
"The woman I married was not respectable, and that was why I didn't tell you."