She stood looking at him despairingly, rebelling passionately against her fate.
“You will at least let me live under the same roof with you, Norman? I will not trouble you; I will not even speak to you unless you wish me! But do not drive me to despair. Let me stay where I can at least see you daily,” she implored.
He comprehended the hope that buoyed her up. She would not accept her fate.
“It is useless,” he said, sternly. “The same roof can never shelter us both, Camille. You can never be anything to me again, and you must go away and leave me in peace.”
“I will not go!” she exclaimed, shrilly, flying into one of the old gusts of passion he remembered so well. “I am your wife, and I have a right to stay here. I will not leave you!”
“It is I then who must go,” he answered, gravely and firmly.
“I will follow you,” she retorted, furiously, stung by his indifference, and he answered:
“Then I must still flee.”
“I will haunt you!” she shrieked, throwing her arms above her head in a tempest of fury. “You shall not escape me! Wherever you go I shall pursue you. You shall learn that there is no escape from love like mine!”
An expression of intense pity, mixed with disgust, crossed the young man’s face; but he made no attempt to reply to the beautiful fury. With a long, deep sigh he turned from her, left the room and left the house, without seeing his mother, to whom, an hour later, there came a brief, stern note: