He had turned.
"No," she said.
"Crayford said nothing?"
"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"
"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"
She was silent.
"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself. And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And you—you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself, and you least of all!"
"Claude!"
"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to guide me in my art life, to bring the poor weak fellow, who had some talent, but who didn't know how to apply it, into the light of success! You meant to make me from the first, and that meant unmaking the man you had married, the man who had lived apart in the odd, little unfashionable Bayswater house, who had lived the odd, little unfashionable life, composing Te Deums and Bible rubbish, the man whom nobody knew, and who didn't specially want to know anyone, except his friends. You thought I was an eccentricity—"
"No, no!" she almost faltered, bending under the storm of unreserve which had broken in this reserved man.