“Can’t we be happy together—as we were last night—after this?”
He felt now that she was trying to pledge him. The fury of her ideals was pursuing him again.
“Do you mean spend every night sitting on the davenport together?” He meant to lighten it, but as usual he failed. Her face showed her shrinking.
“Don’t mock,” she said.
Dick took a restless turn or two around the room and came back to stand over his wife.
“Cecily, I was a fool to disturb you last night. I was worse. I was a robber. I robbed you of the peace that was beginning to come to you. I shan’t ask you to forgive me. It was because I couldn’t help it. But I won’t repeat it. I’ll not bother you again.”
“Are you going away again?”
“It’s better, I think. We aren’t closer—aren’t easy together—aren’t really happy. Isn’t it better that I go?”
There was pleading in his voice, but she was too hurt to hear it; pain, but she was deaf to that, too.
She could only see that he could go; that his going was an insult to her desire that he should stay.