He argued against himself—implored her to accept his sacrifice.
“I would do anything in this world, pay any price, rather than see such despair as I have seen to-night,” he said, standing in the cold, grey dawn, haggard and aged by the long night of agony, beside the bed where that convulsed form lay writhing, with tear-disfigured face, lips wounded and blood-stained, strained eye-balls, and dishevelled hair.
She was adamant against his pleading.
“You cannot give me back my trust in you. I am not the coarse, common creature you think me. I do not want to keep your dull clay when your heart has gone to another. I will show you that I can live without you.”
This was the beginning of a calmer mood, which he was fain to welcome, though he knew that it was the icy calmness of despair. Before the world was astir in Camberwell Grove she had grown curiously quiet and rational. She had bathed her distorted features and bound up her hair. She was clothed and in her right mind again; and she sat quietly listening while he told her the story of his temptation, and how this new love had crept into his heart unawares, and how an innocent girl’s naïve preference had flattered him into infidelity to the love of ten years. She listened quietly while he spoke of the future, trying to make a sunny picture of the new home, in England or abroad, which she was to create for herself.
“You have been far too self-denying,” he said; “you have sacrificed even your own comfort to help me to grow rich. You must at least share my prosperity. Money need be no object in your future existence. Chose your new home where you will, and let it be as bright and enjoyable as ample means can make it.”
“I will take nothing from you but the bare necessities of existence,” she said. “I will go to the obscurest spot that I can find, and rot there alone, or with my daughter, as you think fit. I may ask one favour of you. Get me out of this house as soon as you can. I was once happy here,” she added hoarsely, looking round the room with an expression that tortured him.
“I will take you across the Channel to-day, if you like. Change of air and scene may do you good. You have lived too long in this place.”
“Ten years too long,” she answered, with a faint laugh.
He went across to Boulogne with her by the night mail, established her in a private hotel in the Grande Rue, and left her there within an hour of their landing, with a pocket-book containing a hundred pounds in her lap. Nothing could exceed his tenderness in this parting; nor could any man’s compassion for a woman he had ceased to love be deeper than his. He was full of thoughtfulness for her future. He implored her to think of him as her devoted friend, to whom her welfare was of the uttermost importance, to call upon him unhesitatingly for any help in any scheme of life which she might make for herself.