“Yes.”
“D’you want me to divorce you?”
She gave him a look of utter agony, but would not allow the gathering tears to fall from her eyes; with fierce self-reproach, she wished to excite in him no atom of commiseration. He glanced away, with a certain shame of his next question.
“D’you still care for—Reggie Bassett?”
“No,” she cried exultantly; “I loathe and detest and despise him. I know he’s not worth a quarter of you.”
He threw up his hands helplessly.
“Oh God! I wish I knew what to do. At first I could have killed you, and now—I feel we can’t go on as we are, ought to do something; I can’t forget the whole thing. I ought to hate you, but I can’t; notwithstanding everything, I love you still. If you go, I think I shall die.”
She looked at him thoughtfully, divining in some measure the emotions which tore him in sundry directions. It seemed due to his honour that he should divorce the errant wife, and yet he had not the heart to do it; anger and shame were banished by utter sorrow; and then, he could not bear the scandal and the public disgrace. Paul Castillyon was a man of old-fashioned ideas, and it seemed to him proper for a gentleman to keep his name out of the newspapers. Nor did he like the modern notion that the wronged husband cuts a somewhat heroic figure; he remembered vividly his disgust when a member of his club, divorcing his wife, had sought in the smoking-room to excite sympathy by narration of the lady’s infidelities. He was proud of his name, and could not bear that it should be covered with ridicule; the very thought shamed him, so that he could scarcely face his wife.
“I leave myself entirely in your hands,” she said at length. “I will do whatever you wish.”
“Can’t you give me a little more time to think it over? I don’t want to do anything hastily.”