“But the house will be shut up,” said she, “and everyone will be in bed. It’s nearly midnight. Besides, they might not——” She came to a full stop.
“We are going home,” I repeated. “To the Willoughby.”
She gave me a look that was meant to scorch—and it did. But I showed at the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.
She drew further into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a low voice: “How I hate you!” like the whisper of a bullet.
I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking of a matter which had been finally and amicably settled, I began: “The apartment isn’t exactly ready for us, but Joe’s just about now telephoning my man that we are coming, and telephoning your people to send your maid down there.”
“I wish to go to my uncle’s,” she repeated.
“My wife will go with me,” said I, quietly and gently. “I am considerate of her, not of her unwise impulses.”
A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: “I am in your power just now, but I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle’s, you will wish you had never seen me.”
“I’ve wished that many times already,” said I, sadly. “I’ve wished it from the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate has been forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me than to you. For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate me, too.” I laid my hand on her arm and held it there, though she tried to draw away. “Anita,” I said, “I would do anything for you—live for you, die for you. But there’s that something inside me—you’ve felt it—and when it says ‘must,’ I can’t disobey—you know I can’t. And, though you might break my heart, you could not break that will. It’s as much your master as it is mine.”
“We shall see—to-morrow,” she said.