She dared not look at him. After that first glance, in which there had been so much of horror, of revulsion, she did not once look towards him. Her face had the immutability of a mask of stone; so many wretched days and haunted nights had she spent nerving herself for this inevitable moment that no emotion was visible in her; into her agony she had poured her pride, and it sustained her, as the plaster poured into the dry bones at Pompeii makes the skeleton stand erect, the ashes speak.
"After that which you have told me," she said, after a moment's silence in which he fancied she must hear the throbbing of his heart, "you must know that my life cannot be lived out beside yours. The law gives you many rights, no doubt, but I believe you will not be so base as to enforce them."
"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 Vásárhely 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 or 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.