“In other words, you prefer to be my mistress!” he cried with that intemperance which only comes when the longing for possession is so keen that love and hate tremble in the balance.
“No,” she said, with such dignity that he could not meet her glance; “I am willing to go to you, to live with you, to do everything I can to help you, so long as we are as we are to-day. That, to me, is marriage. To stay as your wife when nothing is left but ashes—no; that is too horrible. If I say this, it’s because I’ve thought about it and have the courage to believe it, because I want to keep my self-respect and my freedom.”
“Oh, your freedom!”
“Yes, my freedom, because like that I always will be free, to come, to go, to give, to think honestly,” she said gently. “Oh, I know you won’t understand. I know you’re thinking terrible thoughts about me. And yet—isn’t my way more honest than—than women who marry and divorce two and three times? Is that respectability to you?”
“What have you been reading?” he said curtly.
“It’s not what I’ve been reading; it’s what I’ve seen,” she said slowly. “It’s other women—it’s my mother’s life.” She covered her face suddenly, and her body shivered. “No, no; don’t ask me to give up my belief! Don’t ask me to be different than I am! I am wild and free as you say; please don’t change me.”
“I only understand one thing,” he said angrily, “and that is you don’t love me. If you did, it would not be a question of discussion.”
“No, no; you’re wrong, Mr. Dan.” She shook her head and held out her arms to him. “Mr. Dan, oh, why won’t you see?”
He turned from her, though in her eyes was a yearning toward him, and her outstretched arms and swaying body drew him to her. He went away and stood apart, his back turned, shaken by the longing which beat in his veins and yet resolved not to yield an inch. He did not believe in her proclaimed theories—they were only excuses. The real reason lay in her distrust of the future. But, this seemed to him so monstrous, at the very moment when he was only conscious of the utter obsession which she had awakened in him, that he raged at the unreasonableness of the barrier which had been thrown across the promise of the future. Her very resistance seemed disloyalty to him, as though another shared her with him and strove against him. All at once a thought awoke him violently. After all, had she ever mentioned the real, the true reason?
He wheeled and went back swiftly.