“Your experience then is limited.”
“Good-bye. You live in too large a glass-house to throw stones, unless you are absolutely reckless and desire the smashing of your own roof.”
With this he left her, and she sat and thought it all over. She was very angry with Mr. George, and yet she laughed. She felt so absolutely sure of herself, and knew her husband was the one man in the world she loved. These others were merely to keep herself from thinking—they were to her what embroidery is to some women. Why should people talk of her? And Mr. George—what a brute he was!
What she hardly dared acknowledge to herself was her husband’s daily increasing indifference. He had been away since the 16th, and he had not told her where he was going.
Was he often with Launa? Jealousy, a raging, burning hatred of the woman who was liked so much, filled her mind, and she stamped her foot with rage. Then she wanted to cry. To feel herself powerless, to know herself mistaken, both were new emotions, both were uncomfortably true and horrible.
Marriage, she reflected, was always a failure; to keep one’s husband as a lover is impossible. At this moment Mr. Herbert came in.
“You!” she exclaimed, with mixed feelings of pleasure and surprise.
“You are alone?”
“How do you do?” she said. She always remembered the observances of polite society. “I am alone. Look behind the curtain or under the sofa if you think I have a man hidden anywhere.”
She resisted an impulse which said, “Speak, say you love him.” He looked in one of his critical moods, so she summoned all her energies to her aid and crushed away any feeling she possessed.