"I'll keep house for you very capably and look after our children. You can leave me if you like, you know."
"God!" he groaned. "What are women made of?"
"Ordinary flesh and blood that gets tired and wants loving. Have you only just remembered to inquire?"
He ran after her along the corridor as she went swiftly to her room.
"Marie!" he prayed. "Relent! Marie, it'll be all so different now. I've all this money; you could have what you wanted."
"I know it'll be different. But, you see, you've done something to me; you've killed all the love I had for you, drained it dry somehow. There's none left. I just—I just—don't want you."
She left his hands and gained her door, leaving him standing; he could have followed her forcibly, but it would have been violation. He felt it and was frightened. Through his anger there broke this fear, the fear of further offending her. When she turned to ask naturally, "You'll turn out the lights?" he just nodded. His mouth was very dry. He wheeled round abruptly, returning to the warm room they had just left.
The whole room seemed to bear her impress; the faintest perfume, almost too delicate to be definite scent, hung there; on the bureau the little stocking she was knitting adhered to the ball of wool, pierced thereto by the long needles. It looked homely, but it was not home. Something had happened, devastating home. He sat for awhile in a sunk posture of dejection, his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees.
"She'll come round," he assured himself presently.
Sentences isolated themselves from her burning speech and struck in his brain ... "if I had to ask for anything, you weren't kind about it; you just flung out of the place, leaving me all the worries. You never helped nor shared." ... "A year ago you left me, glad to go, and I thought my heart would break." ... "But I don't want you." ...