‘I am here,’ he went on, his voice trembling with passion. ‘I whom you have hunted, whose life you have poisoned. Oh, woman! you dare not look at me nor speak to me, but you wrong me behind my back. You whisper tales of me wherever I go. Here I had a moment’s peace and you have ruined it. Tell these people the truth once in your life. Is it I that am in the wrong or you?’
A frightened look had stolen over her face, her eyebrows contracted as with fear. Her eyes became full of tears, and the corners of her beautiful mouth quivered. Heaven forgive me! I asked myself was it all feigning, or had she something kinder and better in her which I had never seen till now? But those eyes, which were like great cups of light filled with dew, once more turned to him. She remained immovable, looking up to his face, when he repeated hoarsely, ‘You or I, which is in the wrong?’
She answered with a shiver which ran all over her, ‘I.’ Her voice was like a sigh. I did not know what his wrongs might be, but whatever they were, at that moment there could be no doubt about it. He, a hard, unsympathetic, inhuman soul, it must be he that was in the wrong, not she, though she confessed it so sweetly; and if this effect was produced upon me, what should it be upon him?
Mr. Reinhardt shook like a leaf in the wind. He had not expected this. It was a surprise to him. He had expected to be blamed. It startled him so, that for the moment he was silent, gazing at her. But old White was not silent. ‘Oh! master, master, come away, come home,’ he pleaded, wringing his hands; and then he came and touched my shoulder and cried like a child. ‘Speak to him, send him away!’ he cried. ‘It is for his own good. If she speaks to him like that, if she keeps her temper, it is all over; it will have all to be begun again.’
Reinhardt made a long pause. He looked as if he were gathering up his strength to speak again, and when he did so, it was with the fictitious heat of a man whose heart is melting. ‘How dare you say “I,”’ he said, ‘when you do not mean it?—when all your life you have said otherwise? You have reproached me, stirred up my friends against me, kept your own sins in the background and published mine. You have done this for years, and now is it a new art you are trying? Do not think you can deceive me,’ he cried, getting up in his agitation; ‘it is impossible. I am not such a credulous fool.’
She kept her eyes on the ceiling, not looking at him; the moisture in them seemed to swell, but did not overflow. ‘I may not change then?’ she said, very low. ‘I may not see that I am wrong? I am not to be permitted to repent?’
He turned from her and began to pace up and down the room; he plucked at his waistcoat and cravat as though they choked him. More than once he returned to the sofa as if with something to say, but went away again. When White approached, he was pushed away with impatience, and once with such force that he span round as he was driven back. This last repulse seemed to convince him. ‘Be a fool, then, if you will, sir,’ he said sharply, and withdrew altogether into a corner, where he watched the scene. I do not think Reinhardt even saw this or anything else. He was walking up and down hastily like a man out of his mind, struggling, one could not but see, with a hundred demons, and tempting his fate.
He came back again however in his tumultuous uncertainty, and bent over her once more. ‘Talk of repentance—talk of change,’ he cried bitterly. ‘How often have you pretended as much? Do you hear me, woman?’ (bending down so close that his breath must have touched her)—‘how often have you done it? how often have you pretended? Oh, false, false as death!’
She put her hand upon his shoulder, almost on his neck. He broke away from her with a hoarse cry; he made another wild march round the room. Then he came back.
‘Julia,’ he cried, ‘Julia, Julia, Julia! Mine!’