"Nora, I am going away now—forever—never to come back, you understand. You will never see my face again unless you come out and speak to me now."
But I would not open my door. I heard him going down-stairs and the slam of the front door. Now I realized what had happened. He had actually gone! Never before had he left me like this. I opened my door, went down-stairs, and then I saw him waiting for me in the living-room. I tried to run back, but he was too quick for me. He sprang after me, caught me in his arms, and half carried me up to his room. There he locked the door, and put the key into his pocket. I wouldn't look at him, I wouldn't speak to him. He came over, and tried to put his arms about me, but I shoved him away, and he said in a voice I had never heard from him before:
"So I've lost you, have I, Nora?" And then, as I would not answer him: "So Bennet cut me out. That's it, is it?"
I said:
"No; no one cut you out but yourself. You've shown yourself to me just as you are, and you're ugly. I hate you!" and I burst into tears.
He knelt down beside me. I was sitting on the edge of the big Morris chair, and all the while he talked to me I had my face covered with my hands.
"Listen to me, Nora. I know I've said things to you for which I ought to be horsewhipped; but I was nearly insane. I am still. I don't know what to think of you, what to do to you. The thought that you, whom I have cherished as something precious and different from every one else in my life, have been deceiving me all these months drives me distracted. I could kill you without the slightest compunction."
I looked at him at that, and I said:
"Roger, you don't think I've done anything wrong, do you?"
"I don't know what to think," he said. "It is a revelation to me that you were capable of deceiving me at all."