“You see how unhappy I am; and you are all I have in the world now. For God’s sake, stay, Eddie. It means more to me than you know.”
She sank to the floor; she was kneeling before him.
“Come, get on to the sofa. All this is very bad for you.”
He carried her to the couch, and then, to finish the scene, hurriedly left the room.
Bertha sprang up to follow him, but sank back as the door slammed, and burying her face in her hands, surrendered herself to a passion of tears. But humiliation and rage almost drove away her grief. She had knelt before her husband for a favour, and he had not granted it. Suddenly she abhorred him. The love, which had been a tower of brass, fell like a house of cards. She would not try now to conceal from herself the faults that stared her in the face. He cared only for himself: with him it was only self, self, self. Bertha found a bitter fascination in stripping her idol of the finery with which her madness had bedizened him; she saw him more accurately now, and he was utterly selfish. But most unbearable of all was her own extreme humiliation.
The rain poured down, unceasing, and the despair of nature ate into her soul. At last she was exhausted; and losing thought of time, lay half-unconscious, feeling at least no pain, her brain vacant and weary. When a servant came to ask if Miss Glover might see her, she hardly understood.
“Miss Glover doesn’t usually stand on such ceremony,” she said ill-temperedly, forgetting the incident of the previous week. “Ask her to come in.”
The parson’s sister came to the door and hesitated, growing red; the expression in her eyes was pained, and even frightened.
“May I come in, Bertha?”
“Yes.”