"He's been with you day and night. You have been together constantly, and I knew what was going on. But I waited, because I wasn't strong enough to revolt—until to-night. Oh, but to-night I was strong! Something gave me courage."
In all their married life she had never known him to show such stubborn force. He was like granite, and the unbelievable change in him, upsetting all her preconceived notions of the man, appalled her. There had been times in the past when they had clashed, but he had never really matched his will with hers, and she had judged him weak and spiritless. Now, therefore, failing to dominate him as usual, she was filled with a strange feeling of helplessness and terror.
"You had no right to accept such evidence," she stormed.
"Bah! Why try to fool me? I have your own words for it. The other afternoon I came home sick—with my head. I was on the gallery outside when you were pleading with him, and I heard it all. You talked that night about Taboga, your guilty kisses and other things; you acknowledged everything. But he was growing tired of you. That, you know, makes it all the more effective." He smiled in an agonized fury.
"You—cur!" she cried, with the fury of one beating barehanded at a barred door. "You had no right to do such a thing even if I were guilty."
"Right? Aren't you my wife?"
The look she gave him was heavy with loathing. "That means nothing with us. I never loved you, and you know it. You know, too, why I married you. I made no secret of it at the time. You had what I wanted, and I had what you wanted; but you were content with the bargain because I gave you money, position, and power. I never promised anything more than that. I made you into something like a man. You never could have succeeded without me. All you have is due to me—even your reputation in the service. Your success, your influence, it is all mine, and the only thing you gave me was a name; any other would have done as well."
He shrank a little under this tirade, despite his exaltation.
"Marriage!" she continued, in bitter scorn. "A priest mumbled something over us, but it meant nothing then or now. I have tolerated you because you were useful. I have carried you with me as I carry a maid or a butler. I bought a manikin and dressed it up and put breath into it for my own convenience, and I owe you nothing, do you understand—nothing! The debt is all on your side, as you and I and all the world know."
"Who made me a manikin?" he demanded, with womanish fury, a fury that had been striving for utterance these many years. "I had ambitions and hopes and ability once—not much, perhaps, but enough—before you married me. I was nothing great, but I was getting along. I had confidence, too, but you took it away from me. You—you absorbed me. You had your father's brain, and it was too big for me; it overshadowed mine. In a way you were a vampire; for what I had you drained me of. At first it was terrible to feel that I was inferior, but I loved you, and although I had some pride—" He choked an instant and threw back her incredulous stare defiantly. "I let myself be eliminated. You thought you were doing me a favor when you put me forward as a figurehead, but to me it was a tragedy. I COULDN'T HELP LETTING YOU DO IT. Do you realize what that means to a fellow? I quit fighting for my own individuality, I became colored by you, I took on your ways, your habits, your mental traits, and—all the time I knew what was happening. God! How I struggled to remain Stephen Cortlandt, but it would have taken a BIG man to mould you to his ways, and I was only average. I began to do your work in your particular style; I forgot my ambitions and my dreams and took up yours. That's what I fell to, and all the time I KNEW it, and—and all the time I knew you neither cared nor understood. My only consolation was the thought that even though you never had loved me and never could, you at least respected our relation. I clung to that miserably, for it was all I had left, all that made me seem like a man. And yet you took away even that. I tried to rebel, but I had been drugged too long. You saw Anthony, and he had the things I lack; you found you were not a machine, but a living woman. He discovered the secret I had wasted away in searching for, and you rewarded him. Oh, I saw the change in you quickly enough, and if I'd been a man instead of what I was, I'd have—but I wasn't. I went spying around like a woman, hating myself for permitting it to go on, but lacking strength to stop it. But to-night, when he got up before those other men and dangled my shame before my eyes, I had enough manhood left in me to strike back. Thank God for that at least! Maybe it's not too late yet; maybe if I get away from you and try—" His voice died out weakly; in his face there was a miserable half-gleam of hope.