“You don’t mean that!” he said. “Clemence, that’s nonsense!”
“It’s truth!” she said steadily. “You must choose!”
She was standing facing him, her slight figure erect and straight as he had never seen it. Her face was white as death, and set into strange, fine lines quite new to it; all the softness about her mouth was being gradually pressed out as the latent strength developed, as it seemed, with every breath she drew. It was as though the crisis, in its sudden demand upon her forces, was transforming her as she grappled with it; transforming her into a woman before whom Julian felt himself shrink into utter contemptibility. He took the only means he knew to reassert himself, and lost his temper deliberately.
“Well, then, I do choose!” he cried violently. “You’re a foolish girl, who doesn’t understand, Clemence, and by-and-by you’ll own I was right! As to not taking my money, that’s absurd, you know! You must! But I’m not going to ruin both of us for absurd fancies!”
He stopped, hoping she would answer and give him some advantage, but she stood silent, gazing at him with stern, searching eyes, as though she were trying in vain to reconcile the man before her with the man she loved. Julian felt her gaze though he could not see it, and he went on hotly, trying, as it were, to gather round him the rags of his old authority and superiority.
“You don’t suppose, Clemence,” he said, “that I propose this because I like it? It’s not a nice thing for a man to propose to his wife, I can tell you. I should have hoped you would have understood that. But after all it’s only for a time, and it won’t make any real difference to you—things will be just as they have been. And if you can’t feel about it as I do, you must remember it’s because you’ve got a great deal to learn still, and you must believe that what I say is right. Anyway, you’re my wife, you know, and you’re bound to obey me!”
“I’m bound to obey you in all things that it’s right you should ask. But I’m not bound to do what would be dragging you down and me too. I can’t make you do what’s right; it wouldn’t do you any good for me to tell your mother; but until you do, it will be as I said.”
“Then it’s you who part us,” he cried passionately. “You don’t love me, Clemence! You can’t ever have loved me!”
There was a moment’s pause, and then her answer came in a strange, still voice.
“I do love you!” she said. “I love you so that I would give my life to blot out what you’ve said!”