“You mean that?” he asked, staring at her.
“Isn’t it true? For you as well as for me? Surely you see the misfortune of our marriage? You don’t like my ideas, my character, my whole outlook on life. That’s unfortunate for you. I detest yours. That’s unfortunate for me. We belong to different sides. That’s unfortunate for both of us.”
Bertram marvelled at the cold way in which she could speak these things. Had she forgotten, utterly, how she had loved him once, and all his devotion to her? Did it mean nothing to her that she had been the mother of his dead child? Was she so heartless that she could see herself divided from him by that sheer gulf of which she spoke, and not agonise at its tragedy, nor weep, but talk so calmly, so coldly of its happening? No, he didn’t believe that. Heart and soul refused to believe.
“My dear!” he said. “My dear! Don’t let’s say bitter and frightful things because we’re out of temper. I know it’s so easy. It’s a question of nerves, little irritations, small rotten differences that mean—just nothing. They don’t matter more than passing shadows. What does matter is our love, above and beyond all that. I want to tell you that my love for you is unaltered, and unalterable, although you have been pretty rough on me lately, and not given love, or anything like a fair deal. . . . But I want to wipe out the remembrance of that. I want you and me to get together again, as comrades and mates. Nothing else would matter then. Our different points of view? Oh, Lord! how trivial! Joyce, take me back to your bed and your heart, and your beauty, and let’s make a game of life again!”
He leaned over her, put his arms around her, tried to draw her close to him, as she sat there in the wicker chair by the little fire that had almost burnt out.
She drew her chair back on the polished boards, and sprang up, beyond his reach.
“What’s all this stuff you’re talking?” she said, angrily, two spots of scarlet on her face. “You say you love me. Why do you always jeer at my friends and my ideas? Sulk in my drawing-room? Behave like a boor to my crowd? Ally yourself with Pacifists and pro-Germans and revolutionaries? You say you love me, and talk sentiment. Less sentiment, please, and more honesty. That offer to-night! It was a test of loyalty. To England in a big way—certainly to me, as far as I mean anything in your life. Yet you refused it. You failed to pass the test. Why, from the lowest point of view, you ought to want to keep your end up, and pay your own way, like an honest man! You remember the word I spoke to Kenneth? I use it again now, to your face. You’re a traitor to the things I stand for, to all I am. Until you do something to put yourself right again, I won’t live with you. It’s dishonouring.”
“By God!” said Bertram.
He was white to the lips now, with anguish and rage. This girl used her tongue like a lash. She cut his heart open, flayed his soul. And yet, as she stood there, facing him, he loved her with an extreme passion, and her beauty was a torture to him.
He acknowledged the truth of some things she said. He had jeered at her friends, often enough. He had sulked in her drawing-room. He had behaved like a boor to her crowd. All that was true. But the rest of it was not true, and it was cruel. She called him traitor—he who loved England as he loved Joyce, hungrily, so that the smell of its earth, as the fragrance of her hair, excited his senses, touched him with spiritual emotion. It was damnable that she should use such words. “Dishonouring!” she said. She wouldn’t live with him because it was dishonouring!