She was rising, but he reached a hand across and seized hers as it rested on the table edge.
“Do you think you can put this scene off?” he demanded. “You have got to listen. You had no business to marry Collingwood in the first place. It is time the thing came to an end.”
Mrs. Collingwood very quietly pulled her hand out of his grasp.
“So,” she said. She had the air of one who finds herself incarcerated with a madman. Judge Barton leaned far across the table, his eyes gleaming, his rather large, powerful face flushed, all the brute strength of the man dominating the urbane jurist who said clever things in a rich, well-modulated voice.
“You had no business to marry him in the first place,” he said. “But that’s done. Still you can change it.”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Collingwood, a very level intonation of contempt in her tone. It irritated the Judge, and his vehemence rose higher.
“Anything can be changed in these days,” he went on. “I want you to divorce Collingwood and to marry me.”
“Well, I shan’t,” said Mrs. Collingwood. She did not offer to rise, however. Her heart was swelling with anger, humiliation, and a dull disappointment in the man in front of her. But some unaccountable instinct held her listening to the end. She did want to hear what he would say, she knew it would wound her, but she had a very strong curiosity as to how far he would go; and a retrospect of all her past association with him flashed through her mind. A faint smile curved her lips as she remembered the weeks when he had been free, had he so chosen, to make love to her. But he had not wanted to make love to her, till, in the making, he violated all the laws of right and loyalty. She sat very white and rigid, and the Judge felt in her once again the woman who had challenged his old self-complacency.
“I suppose it was natural,” he went on. “You were alone. You had to have your romance. But what will it be to ours?—to ours? I’ll be a lover to rival the lovers of history—a husband—and we’ll do some of the things we want to do in this world. We have ambitions, both of us. Dear—” his voice dropped like a violin note on the octave—“take the same courage you had in hand to make this mistake, and remedy it. You defied public opinion in marrying Collingwood. Defy it once again to get rid of him. The world will understand you better. Yes, by Jove! it will sympathize more.”
“I shall not test it,” said Mrs. Collingwood. This time she rose definitely. “I thank God you are going away to-morrow. The very air will be freer and cleaner after you have gone.”