“The answer to that question concerns me alone.”
An ordinary man would have laughed; but Asa Arnold was not an ordinary man––not at this time.
“As your husband, I can’t agree with you.”
Camilla Maurice took up his words, quickly.
“You mistake. You’re the husband of Eleanor Owen. I’m not she.”
The man went on calmly, as though there had been no interruption.
“I don’t want to be hard on you, Eleanor. I don’t think I have been hard on you. A year has passed, and I’ve known you were here from the first day. But this sort of thing can’t go on indefinitely; there’s a limit, even to good nature. I ask you again, when are you coming back?” 159
The woman looked at her companion, for the first time steadily. Even she, who knew him so well, felt a shade of wonder at the man who could adjust all the affairs of his life in the same voice with which he ordered his dinner. Before, she had always thought this attitude of his pure affectation. Now she knew better, knew it mirrored the man himself. He had done this thing. Knowing her whereabouts all the time, he had allotted her the past year, as an employer would grant a holiday to an assistant. Now he asked her to return to the old life, as calmly as one returns in the fall to the city home after an outing! Only one man in the world could have done that thing, and that man was before her––her husband by law––Asa Arnold!
The wonder of it all crept into her voice.
“I’m not coming back, can’t you understand? I’m never coming back,” she repeated.