They could scarcely have told how it all began, but at last they were quarreling most bitterly. There were mutual recriminations and fault-findings, that increased in virulence until one day, goaded by Verna’s reproaches, Leon cried out in hot resentment:
“I regret that I ever saw you!”
“I hate you!” she replied, with a scornful flash of her great, somber, dark eyes, and whether the words were true or not, she never took them back—neither one ever professed sorrow for angry words or begged forgiveness. The husband, hurt by her sneers, pained by her reproaches, and inwardly wounded by his inability to provide for her better, took refuge in sullen silence that she resented by downright sulking. She was furious at his unkindness, disgusted with her poverty, and unconsciously ill of a trouble she did not suspect, so the breach widened between their hearts until one day she said with rigid white lips and somber, angry eyes:
“I am tired of starving and freezing here where I am not wanted! I shall go home and beg papa to forgive my folly and get me a divorce from you.”
The awful words were spoken and they fell on his heart like hailstones, but though he grew pale as death and his whole frame trembled, he feigned the cruelest indifference, saying bitterly:
“You could not please me better!”
So the die was cast.
Perhaps she had wished to test his love, perhaps she hoped that the fear of losing her might beat down the armor of his stubborn pride and make him sue for a reconciliation.
Whatever she might have secretly desired, his answer was a deathblow to her hopes.
At his words a strange look flashed into her large, dark eyes, and for a moment her red mouth quivered like a child’s at an unexpected blow. But she swallowed a choking sob, and the next moment her young face grew rigid as a mask.