He spoke hastily, in manifest discomfiture:—
“I am worthy of no man's thought.”
“Pshaw! you are a hypochondriac.”
“Would it were that!—But you go!—when?”
“In a week, perhaps.”
“So soon? So very soon? Do you—do you carry your family with you at once?”
There was great effort to speak this significant inquiry. I perceived that. I perceived that his eyes were on the ground while it was made. The question was offensive to me. It had a strange and painful significance. It recalled the whole cause, the bitter cause of my resolve for exile; and I could not control the altered tones of my voice in answering, which I did with some causticity of feeling, which necessarily entered into my utterance.
“Family, surely! My wife only! No great charge, I'm thinking, and her health needs an early change. Would you have me leave HER? I have no other family, you know!”
The dialogue, carried on with restraint before, was shortened by this; and, after a few business remarks, which were necessary to our office concerns, he pleaded an engagement to get away. He left me with some soreness upon my mind, which formed its expression in a brief soliloquy.
“You would have the path made even freer than before, would you? It does not content you, these long morning meditations—these pretended labors of the painting-room, the suspicious husband withdrawn, and the wife, neither scorning nor consenting, willing to believe in that devotion to the art which is properly a devotion to herself? These are not sufficient opportunities, eh? There were—more room for landscape, appoint you, Mr. Edgerton!—Ah! could I but know all. Could I be sure that she did love him! Could I be sure that she did not! That is the curse—that doubt!—Will it remain so? No! no! Once removed—once in those forest regions, it can not be that she will repine for anything. She MUST love me then—she will feel anew the first fond passion. She will forget these passing fancies. They WILL pass! She is young. The image will haunt her no longer—at least, it will no longer haunt me!”