“It wouldn’t be a bad solution.”
She ran back, tried to catch him round the neck with her pleading arms, murmured pet names, shivered, sobbed, shook, tried vainly, in the wrong way, to win back the old, transient adoration.
He wrenched himself away, as he would have freed himself from a skein.
“I’m sick of these rows,” he said savagely. “Do as I wish. Mind what you’re at with Sutton—he knows a precious deal that I’d rather he didn’t. Play Milligan. A clever woman would do it all without compromise, but you are a prude—one of those ardent, faithful prudes that make a man curse. Hang it all, I don’t want your extravagant devotion; I’m in need of help. I don’t care what you do so long as I don’t know—that’s married fidelity up to date. Do you understand?”
“I can’t—I won’t! My life is one degradation; you don’t care. If I were some shameful woman, not your wife——”
“By George! if you knew all, you’re little better. That jargon in the church—Sutton to give you away, the verger as best man—didn’t put you on a pedestal of virtue.”
“I won’t—I can’t!” she repeated desperately, linking and unlinking her hands, looking up at him with the devoted, obstinate eyes of a dog who is afraid.
“Then go. You are a burden, an irritant.”
“You mean that?”
“Of course. I mean everything.”