“Oh, merciful God! what shall I do?” she prayed aloud.
“That's just what I'm curious to know. When you leaped in here, just now, you must have meant to do something, if I couldn't convince you that the woman was lying. Well, you see that I don't try. I give you leave to believe whatever she said. What then?”
“Bartley!” she besought him in her despair. “Do you drive me from you?”
“Oh, no, certainly not. That isn't my way. You have driven me from you, and I might claim the right to retaliate, but I don't. I've no expectation that you'll go away, and I want to see what else you'll do. You would have me, before we were married; you were tolerably shameless in getting me; when your jealous temper made you throw me away, you couldn't live till you got me back again; you ran after me. Well, I suppose you've learnt wisdom, now. At least you won't try that game again. But what will you do?” He looked at her smiling, while he dealt her these stabs one by one.
She set down the child, and went out to the entry where its hat and cloak hung. She had not taken off her own things, and now she began to put on the little one's garments with shaking hands, kneeling before it. “I will never live with you again, Bartley,” she said.
“Very well. I doubt it, as far as you're concerned; but if you go away now, you certainly won't live with me again, for I shall not let you come back. Understand that.”
Each had most need of the other's mercy, but neither would have mercy.
“It isn't for what you won't deny. I don't believe that. It's for what you've said now.” She could not make the buttons and the button-holes of the child's sack meet with her quivering fingers; he actually stooped down and buttoned the little garment for her, as if they had been going to take the child out for a walk between them. She caught it up in her arms, and, sobbing “Good by, Bartley!” ran out of the room.
“Recollect that if you go, you don't come back,” he said. The outer door crashing to behind her was his answer.
He sat down to think, before the fire he had built for her. It was blazing brightly now, and the whole room had a hideous cosiness. He could not think, he must act. He went up to their room, where the gas was burning low, as if she had lighted it and then frugally turned it down as her wont was. He did not know what his purpose was, but it developed itself. He began to pack his things in a travelling-bag which he took out of the closet, and which he had bought for her when she set out for Equity in the summer; it had the perfume of her dresses yet.