"I ought to have gone when he told me to. But I didn't. I was awfully gone on him.
"And—last night—we were to have gone to the theater together; but he'd been drinkin' and I said I wouldn't go with him. Then he swore at me and struck me, and said I might go by myself. And I went. And when I came home he shut the door on me and turned me into the street with nothing but the clothes on me back and what I had in me purse. And he said if I came back he'd do for me."
She got it out, the abominable history, in a succession of jerks, in a voice dulled to utter apathy.
And an intolerable pity held him silent before this beaten thing, although with every word she dragged him nearer to the ultimate, foreseen disaster.
She went on.
"I was scared to walk about the streets all night in these things. I always was more afraid of that than anything. Though he never would believe me when I said so. You don't know the names he called me. So I took a taxi and I went to the first hotel I could think of—the Thackeray. But I hadn't enough money with me, and they wouldn't take me in. Then I went and sat in the waiting-room at Euston Station till they closed. Then I sat outside on the platform and pretended to be waitin' for a train. He wouldn't believe me if I told him I'd spent the night in that station. But I did. And I got me death of cold. And in the morning me cough started, and they wouldn't take me in any of the shops because of it.
"I tried all morning. Starker's first. Then in the afternoon I went to Father, and he wouldn't have me. He won't believe I haven't been bad, because of me things and me cough. I suppose he thinks I've got consumption or something. He saw me coming in at the gate and he turned me out straight. I didn't even get to the door."
"He couldn't—"
"He did—reelly, Ranny, he did. He said he'd washed his hands of me and I could go back to you. He said—No, I can't tell you what he said."
There was no need to tell. He knew.