“My position—is this,” he said abruptly. “I thought—any man would have thought—that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should secure rustic innocence as surely as I should secure pink cheeks; but—However, I am no man to reproach you, and I will not.”
Tess felt his position so entirely that the remainder had not been needed. Therein lay just the distress of it; she saw that he had lost all round.
“Angel—I should not have let it go on to marriage with you if I had not known that, after all, there was a last way out of it for you; though I hoped you would never—”
Her voice grew husky.
“A last way?”
“I mean, to get rid of me. You can get rid of me.”
“How?”
“By divorcing me.”
“Good heavens—how can you be so simple! How can I divorce you?”
“Can’t you—now I have told you? I thought my confession would give you grounds for that.”