“That isn’t true,” he said, firmly. “I haven’t made one sacrifice or given up a single thing I wanted on your account.”
“Please, Mr. Dan—oh, please. You said it. We must tell each other the truth!” she said, with a sudden intensity. From this moment all indecision passed from her, as though she had finally dried the one rebellious tear which had come uncontrollably to her eyes.
“This is the truth,” he said, with an attempt at openness. “If it were not for you—not because I should be afraid for you, but because I know you would hate the life, I might drift back into a certain purely formal society that once made up my life. But what would that mean to me? Absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, it might represent a danger. It is hard to seek out the world without being in the end a slave to it so that, don’t you see—and I’ve been absolutely honest—what you might think I’ve done for you, is really the thing I should do for myself.”
She did not answer, but sat considering what he had said, turning it over from every angle as women do, seeking the chain of motives and the reasons which it might reveal.
Seeing her indecision he believed that he had found the reason of her renunciation.
“Inga, why always sacrifice yourself, always think of me?” he burst out. “For that at the bottom is what it is. There’s something rigid and cold about it which is like the country you come from. You want to go out of my life because you think that that act will set me free. You rebel because you think I am held to you by a sense of loyalty and gratitude. Now listen. You may think that another woman may come into my life, a woman brought up in the superficial life which I have known. You’re utterly and absolutely wrong and the trouble is you undervalue yourself. There’s no other woman—there can be no other woman in my life. What you are to me is absolutely what I need, the companionship above all others.”
She turned and looked at him with an expression so inscrutable that he felt uncomfortable beneath this challenge as though he were guilty of some evasion and had been caught in the act.
“Why do you look at me like that?” he said, uneasily.
“Mr. Dan,” she said, impulsively, “don’t you see the truth—it’s not you I am thinking of! It’s myself, my life.”
“What!” he said, completely thrown off his guard. “But Inga, doesn’t it mean something to be my wife, to share in my success, to feel that you have done it all? Isn’t that a triumph for you? Isn’t that sufficient? Doesn’t that thrill you?”