“Now, my dear girl!” ejaculated Robert, relief making his tone almost jocular.
“No, please, Robert, let me finish. I’m not complaining, you understand, or pleading, or doing anything futile of that sort. I’m merely stating the fact—and accepting it. I want to do what I can, to—to make things more interesting for you. All this summer we shall have visitors. In the autumn, when we go to town, it should not be difficult to see very little of one another. But we needn’t wait for that. Let us be free now. I mean, let us give up pretending to be lovers. We shall then, perhaps, be better friends.”
For a moment before he began to speak he looked at her uncertainly. Then he broke into the torrent of speech she had dreaded.
Wasn’t it time to take a broader outlook? Why did she resent any attempt on his part to widen the horizon of their married life? What had he done to be treated in this fashion?... But, of course, if she wished this state of things, so let it be. He could not coerce her. He respected her rights as an individual. That was, in fact, his whole philosophy of existence,—individual freedom, individual liberty, the expression of oneself....
“I regret it, of course, but if you wish it, that is enough. It is your doing, remember—entirely yours. If you choose to put your own interpretation upon views of life which, in all sincerity, for our mutual benefit I have tried to make you share, I have nothing to say. Must a man necessarily be bored with his wife because he wishes a wider outlook for her, as well as for himself?” He paused indignantly on the question.
Cecily took up her embroidery. “Not necessarily, perhaps,” she said, “though he generally is. But need we say any more, Robert? The thing is settled, isn’t it?”
“By you, remember,” returned Robert, “in utter unreason, in——”
“Never mind how, so long as it is settled,” murmured Cecily.
He rose, and walked away, while mechanically with a sort of feverish haste, Cecily went on working. His words rang in her ears, false and insincere. His eyes had spoken truth, and in them she had read relief. In the beech tree, above her head, a thrush began to sing. Cecily listened to the first low, passionate notes, then letting her work fall into a heap on the grass, she sprang to her feet and hurried blindly towards the house, and the shelter of her own room. There she crouched against the bed, and drew the counterpane up till it covered her ears.