“You know, Jenny, he’s a man of honour, and he’d never do anything that wasn’t straight.”
“Oh, I know he’s a man of honour,” she cried bitterly. “I wish he had a little less of it; one doesn’t want a lot at fine sentiments in married life—they don’t work.” She stood up and beat her breast. “Oh, why couldn’t I fall in love with a man of my own class? I should have been so much happier. I used to be so proud that Basil wasn’t a clerk or something in the City. He’s right—we shall never be happy. It isn’t a matter of yesterday, or to-day, or to-morrow. I can’t alter myself. He knew I wasn’t a lady when he married me. My father had to bring up five children on two-ten a week. You can’t expect a man to send his daughters to a boarding-school at Brighton on that, and have them finished in Paris. . . . He doesn’t say a word when I do something or say something a lady wouldn’t, but he purses up his lips and looks. Then I get so mad I do things just to aggravate him. Sometimes I try to be vulgar. One learns a good deal in a bar in the City, and I know so well the things that’ll make Basil curl up. I want to get a bit of revenge out of him sometimes, and I know exactly where he’s raw and where I can hurt him. You should see the way he looks when I don’t eat properly, or call a man a Johnny.”
“It opens up endless possibilities of domestic unhappiness,” answered Frank dryly.
“Oh, I know it isn’t fair to him, but I lose my head. I can’t always be refined. Sometimes I can’t help breaking out; I feel I must let myself go.”
Her cheeks were flaming, and she breathed rapidly. Never before had she disclosed her heart so completely to anyone, and Frank, watching her keenly, could not understand this curious mingling of love and hate.
“Why don’t you separate, then?” he asked.
“Because I love him.” Her voice, hard and metallic before, grew suddenly so tender that the change was extraordinary; the bitterness went out of her face. “Oh, you don’t know how I love him! I’d do anything to make him happy; I’d give my life if he wanted it. Oh, I can’t say it, but when I think of him my heart burns so that sometimes I can hardly breathe. I can never show him that he’s all in the world to me; I try to make him love me, and I only make him hate me. What can I do to show him? Ah, if he only knew, I’m sure he’d not regret that he married me. I feel—I feel as if my heart was full of music, and yet something prevents me from ever bringing it out.”
For awhile they sat in silence.
“What is it you wish me to do?” asked Frank at last.
“I want you to tell him I love him. I can’t; I always make a mess of it. Tell him he’s all in the world to me, and I will try to be a good wife to him. Ask him not to leave me, and say that I mean everything for the best.” She paused and dried her eyes. “And couldn’t you go to Mrs. Murray and tell her? Ask her to have mercy on me. Perhaps she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Ask her not to take him away from me.”