"My wife?" he said, almost in his usual voice.
She said nothing; she was struggling with herself. He got up abruptly, walked to the open window, stood there a few seconds, and came back.
"It has to be all thought out again," he said, looking at her appealingly. "I must go away, perhaps—and realise—what can be done. I took marriage as carelessly as I took everything else. I must try and do better with it."
A sudden perception leapt in Marcella, revealing strange worlds. How she could have hated—with what fierceness, what flame!—the woman who taught ideal truths to Maxwell! She thought of the little self-complacent being in the white satin wedding-dress, that had sat beside her at Castle Luton—thought of her with overwhelming soreness and pain. Stepping quickly, her tears driven back, she went across the room to Tressady.
"I don't know what to say," she began, stopping suddenly beside him, and leaning her hand for support on a table while her head drooped. "I have been very selfish—very blind. But—mayn't it be the beginning—of something quite—quite—different? I was thinking only of Maxwell—or myself. But I ought to have thought of you—of my friend. I ought to have seen—but oh! how could I!" She broke off, wrestling with this amazing difficulty of choosing, amid all the thoughts that thronged to her lips, something that might be said—and if said, might heal.
But before he could interrupt her, she went on: "The harm was, in acting all through—by myself—as if only you and I, and Maxwell's work—were concerned. If I had made you known to him—if I had remembered—had thought—"
But she stopped again, in a kind of bewilderment. In truth she did not yet understand what had happened to her—how it could have happened to her—to her, whose life, soul, and body, to the red ripe of its inmost heart, was all Maxwell's, his possession, his chattel.
Tressady looked at her with a little sad smile.
"It was your unconsciousness," he said, in a low trembling voice, "of what you are—and have—that was so beautiful."
Somehow the words recalled her natural dignity, her noble pride as
Maxwell's wife. She stood erect, composure and self-command returning.
She was not her own, to humble herself as she pleased.