‘Return to me? God forbid!’
‘So say I, though you might put it a little more politely. By the way, I forgot to ask you,—but perhaps you yourself have married again?’
The question came suddenly like a stab. Bradley started in fresh horror, holding his hand upon his heart. She exclaimed:—
‘You might have done so, you know, thinking me food for worms, and if such were the case you may be sure I should never have betrayed you. No; “live and let live” is my motto. I am not such a fool as to suppose you have never looked at another woman; and if you had consoled yourself, taking some nice, pretty, quiet, homely creature, fit to be a clergyman’s wife, to mend his stockings, and to visit the sick with rolls of flannel and bottles of beef-tea, I should have thought you had acted like a sensible man.’
It was too horrible. He felt stifled, asphyxiated. He had never before encountered such a woman, though their name is legion in all the Babylons, and he could not understand her. With a deep frown he rose to his feet.
‘Are you going?’ she cried. ‘Pray don’t, till we understand each other!’
He turned and fixed his eyes despairingly upon her, looking so worn, so miserable, that even her hard heart was touched.
‘Try to think I am really dead,’ she said, ‘and it will be all right. I have changed both my life and my name, and no one of my old friends knows me. I don’t act. Eustace wanted to take a theatre for me, but, after all, I prefer idleness to work, and I am not likely to reappear. I have no acquaintances out of theatrical circles, where I am known only as Mrs. Montmorency. So you see there is no danger, mon cher. Let me alone, and I shall let you alone. You can marry again whenever you like.’
Again she touched that cruel chord, and again he seemed like a man stabbed.
‘Marry?’ he echoed. ‘But I am not free! You are still my wife.’