“Let me defend you, Lucio, from the pertinacities of this wanton!” I cried with a wild burst of laughter—“An hour ago I thought she was my wife,—I find her nothing but a purchased chattel, who seeks a change of masters!”
[p 370]
XXXI
For one instant we all three stood facing each other,—I breathless and mad with fury,—Lucio calm and disdainful,—my wife staggering back from me, half-swooning with fear. In an access of black rage, I rushed upon her and seized her in my arms.
“I have heard you!” I said—“I have seen you! I have watched you kneel before my true friend, my loyal comrade there, and try your best to make him as vile as yourself! I am that poor fool, your husband,—that blind egoist whose confidence you sought to win—and to betray! I am the unhappy wretch whose surplus of world’s cash has bought for him in marriage a shameless courtezan! You dare to talk of love? You profane its very name! Good God!—what are such women as you made of? You throw yourselves into our arms,—you demand our care—you exact our respect—you tempt our senses—you win our hearts,—and then you make fools of us all! Fools, and worse than fools,—you make us men without feeling, conscience, faith, or pity! If we become criminals, what wonder! If we do things that shame our sex, is it not because you set us the example? God—God! I, who loved you,—yes, loved you in spite of all that my marriage with you taught me,—I, who would have died to save you from a shadow of suspicion,—I am the one out of all the world you choose to murder by your treachery!”
I loosened my grasp of her,—she recovered her self-possession [p 371] by an effort, and looked at me straightly with cold unfeeling eyes.
“What did you marry me for?” she demanded—“For my sake or your own?”
I was silent,—too choked with wrath and pain to speak. All I could do was to hold out my hand to Lucio, who grasped it with a cordial and sympathetic pressure. Yet ... I fancied he smiled!
“Was it because you desired to make me happy out of pure love for me?” pursued Sibyl—“Or because you wished to add dignity to your own position by wedding the daughter of an Earl? Your motives were not unselfish,—you chose me simply because I was the ‘beauty’ of the day whom London men stared at and talked of,—and because it gave you a certain ‘prestige’ to have me for your wife, in the same way as it gave you a footing with Royalty to be the owner of the Derby-winner. I told you honestly what I was before our marriage,—it made no effect upon your vanity and egoism. I never loved you,—I could not love you, and I told you so. You have heard, so you say, all that has passed between me and Lucio,—therefore you know why I married you. I state it boldly to your face,—it was that I might have your intimate friend for my lover. That you should pretend to be scandalized at this is absurd; it is a common position of things in France, and is becoming equally common in England. Morality has always been declared unnecessary for men,—it is becoming equally unnecessary for women!”
I stared at her, amazed at the glibness of her speech, and the cool convincing manner in which she spoke, after her recent access of passion and excitement.