'I have no rights!' he muttered. 'I am a criminal before the law. The law will free you from me, if you choose.'
'I do not choose,' she said coldly; 'you understand me ill. I do not carry my wrongs or my woes to others. What you have told me is known only to Prince Vàsàrhely and to the Countess Brancka. He will be silent; he has the power to make her so. The world need know nothing. Can you think that I shall be its informant?'
'If you divorce me——' he murmured.
A quiver of bitter anger passed over her features, but she retained her self-control.
'Divorce? What could divorce do for me? Could it destroy the past? Neither Church nor Law can undo what you have done. Divorce would make me feel that in the past I had been your mistress, not your wife, that is all.'
She breathed heavily, and again pressed her hand on her breast.
'Divorce!' she repeated. 'Neither priest nor judge can efface a past as you clean a slate with a sponge! No power, human or divine, can free me, purify me, wash your dishonoured blood from your children's veins.'
She almost lost her self-control; her lips trembled, her eyes were full of flame, her brow was black with passion. With a violent effort she restrained herself; invective or reproach seemed to her low and coarse and vile.
He was silent; his greatest fear, the torture of which had harassed him sleeping and waking ever since he had placed his secret in her hands, was banished at her words. She would seek no divorce—the children would not be disgraced—the world of men would not learn his shame; and yet as he heard a deeper despair than any he had ever known came over him. She was but as those sovereigns of old who scorned the poor tribunals of man's justice because they held in their own might the power of so much heavier chastisement.
'I shall not seek for a legal separation,' she resumed; 'that is to say, I shall not, unless you force me to do so to protect myself from you. If you fail to abide by the conditions I shall prescribe, then you will compel me to resort to any means that may shelter me from your demands. But I do not think you will endeavour to force on me conjugal rights which you obtained over me by a fraud.'