“You don’t notice my absence as I notice yours,” said Bertha in a low voice, looking down.
“But it’s raining cats and dogs, and you’ll get wet through, if you come.”
“What do I care about that if I’m with you!”
“Then come by all means if you like.”
“You don’t care if I come or not; it’s nothing to you.”
“Well, I think it would be very silly of you to come in the rain. You bet, I shouldn’t go if I could help it.”
“Then go,” she said. She kept back with difficulty the bitter words which were on the tip of her tongue.
“You’re much better at home,” said her husband, cheerfully. “I shall be in to tea at five. Ta-ta!”
He might have said a thousand things. He might have said that nothing would please him more than that she should accompany him, that the appointment could go to the devil and he would stay with her. But he went off, cheerfully whistling. He didn’t care. Bertha’s cheeks grew red with the humiliation of his refusal.
“He doesn’t love me,” she said, and suddenly burst into tears—the first tears of her married life, the first she had wept since her father’s death; and they made her ashamed. She tried to control them, but could not and wept ungovernably. Edward’s words seemed terribly cruel; she wondered how he could have said them.