"What?"
"That she—she'd never st—stick living at the Weare Grange. You were her friend."
Muriel shook her head. "I did not think," she said.
Indeed, she realized now how little she had thought of Clare and Godfrey. Never once had the question of their real happiness entered her mind, so much engrossed had she been with the thoughts of her own misery. It had been herself, not Godfrey, who had filled her dreams. The recognition of her own past egoism shocked her.
"You might have thought. You might have told me," he continued. "There I've been thinking, for years, that I was going to marry her. And all the time it really was impossible. She couldn't stand that life—wasn't fit for it. Spoiled by all this singing and publicity and having her photograph in the papers—wanted to fill the house with damned foreigners and Jews and things."
He was hurt and angry, wounded in his self-assurance, wounded even more deeply in the one thing that he had cared about more than he had cared for Clare.
"Wouldn't see it either. Wouldn't see my point of view. Didn't see why I shouldn't shut up the Grange and come to live in London, or Paris or some filthy hole. Good Lord, as if I hadn't had enough of dirty foreigners. Wasn't three years in Germany enough in all conscience? But no, she'd have her own way. She——"
He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. Muriel sat quietly, at the table, watching him.
"I told her that I wanted to marry a wife, not a p—prima-donna," he stormed. "I wanted someone who'd be a companion, who'd take an interest in my work. A man in my position wants some one to be his—his hostess, and look after his home and all that sort of thing. By Jove, she d—doesn't know what she's missed, though."
He turned to the fire, speaking gruffly and shamefacedly, amazed at the affront to his fine self-esteem, and too much of a child still to avoid seeking sympathy.