“Why should you think so, Julia?”
“Ah! your words answer your question, and speak for me. They are so few—they have no warmth in them; and then, you leave me so much, dear husband—why, why do you leave me?”
“You do not miss me much, Julia.”
“Do I not! ah! you do me wrong. I miss nothing else but you. I have all that I had when we were first married—all but my husband!”
“Do not deceive yourself, Julia; these fine speeches do not deceive me. I am afraid that the love of woman is a very light thing. It yields readily to the wind. It does not keep in one direction long, any more than the vane on the house-top.”
“You do NOT think so, Edward. Such is not MY love. Alas! I know not how to make it known to you, husband, if it be not already known; and yet it seems to me that you do not know it, or, if you do, that you do not care much about it. You seem to care very little whether I love you or not.”
I exclaimed bitterly, and with the energy of deep feeling.
“Care little! I care little whether you love me or no! Psha! Julia, you must think me a fool!”
It did seem to me a sort of mockery, knowing my feelings as I did—knowing that all my folly and suffering came from the very intensity of my passion—that I should be reproached, by its object, with indifference! I forgot, that, as a cover for my suspicion, I had been striving with all the industry of art to put on the appearance of indifference. I did not give myself sufficient credit for the degree of success with which I had labored, or I might have suddenly arrived at the gratifying conclusion, that, while I was impressed and suffering with the pangs of jealousy, my wife was trembling with fear that she had for ever lost my affections. My language, the natural utterance of my real feelings, was not true to the character I had assumed. It filled the countenance of the suffering woman with consternation. She shrunk from me in terror. Her hand was withdrawn from my neck, as she tremulously replied:—
“Oh, do not speak to me in such tones. Do not look so harshly upon me. What have I done?”