“Nonsense, Evelyn. Don’t you know that you have the deposit notes for every pound I ever saved locked up in your desk.”
“Ah, but you might speculate—you may have ruined yourself, all the same.”
“I have not ruined myself that way, Evelyn. Oh! for God’s sake, forgive me, pity me, if you can. I have engaged myself to a girl who loves me, though I am twenty years her senior; a girl who is proud of me and believes in me. This engagement means a new and happy life for me, and may mean release for you—who knows? We have neither of us been happy lately. I think we have both felt that the end must come.”
She laid her hand upon his breast, holding the lapel of his coat tightly with her thin white fingers, as if she would pin him there for ever, looking straight into his eyes, with her own eyes dilated and flaming.
“You are a coward and a traitor!” she said, between her clenched teeth. “You are lying, and you know you are lying. The tie has grown weaker for you, perhaps—not for me. For me every year has strengthened it—for me every hope I have has pointed to one future—the future in which I am to be your wife. You know what my husband’s habits are—you know what his life is worth as compared with yours. You know that we must be near the end of our probation, that suddenly, without an hour’s warning, we may hear of his death, and you will be free to give me the name and place I have earned by ten years’ fidelity, and patience, and self-denial. You know this, and that my life is bound up in yours; that I cannot exist without you except as the most miserable of women; that I have not a friend in the world, not a hope in the world, not an ambition in the world but you; and you look me in the face with those cold, cruel eyes, and tell me you have engaged yourself to a girl twenty years your junior, that you are going to cast me off—me, your wife of ten years—more than wife in devotion, more than wife in self-sacrifice——”
“God knows the sacrifice was mutual, Evelyn. If there has been surrender on your side there has been surrender on mine. I have turned my back upon society just at the time when it would have been most enjoyable and most valuable. But I won’t even try to excuse myself. I have acted very badly—I deserve the worst you can say of me. I thought I was sure of myself, I thought I was rock; but the hour of temptation came, and I was not strong enough to withstand it. Be generous, Evelyn. Clasp hands and forgive me. Wherever I am and whatever I do your welfare shall be my first, most sacred care. The money I have saved shall be invested for your benefit—shall be secured to your use and our daughter’s after you.”
“Money, benefit,” she cried, wildly. “How dare you talk to me of money? How dare you put my wrongs in the balance against your sordid money? Do you think money can help me to forget you—or to hate myself less than I do for having loved and trusted you?”
And then followed a paroxysm of passionate despair at the memory of which, after all the intervening years of peace and prosperity, wedded love and deadened conscience, his blood ran cold. He found himself face to face with a woman’s frenzy, impotent to comfort or to tranquillize her. There was a moment when he had to exert brute force to prevent her from dashing her brains out against the wall.
All through that long, hideous night he watched by her, and pleaded with her, and guarded her from her own violence. At one time he was on his knees before her, offering to give up the desire of his heart, to break his solemn engagement of a few hours old, and to remain true to her till the end of time; but she spurned his offered sacrifice.
“What, now that I know you love another woman? What, keep you by my side, while I know your heart is elsewhere? What, have you mine by the strength of a chain, like a galley-slave linked to his gaol-companion, knowing that you hate me? Not for worlds—not to be a duchess. No, no, no! The wrong is done—the wrong was in withdrawing your love. There is no such thing as faithfulness from you to me. All is over.”