‘I had utterly forgotten it,’ he returned with a mocking laugh. ‘That shows how ridiculous such a thing would have been.’
‘You are doing no literary work at all?’ Amy asked.
‘Do you imagine that I have the peace of mind necessary for anything of that sort?’
This was in a changed voice. It reminded her so strongly of her husband before his disasters that she could not frame a reply.
‘Do you think I am able to occupy myself with the affairs of imaginary people?’
‘I didn’t necessarily mean fiction.’
‘That I can forget myself, then, in the study of literature?—I wonder whether you really think of me like that. How, in Heaven’s name, do you suppose I spend my leisure time?’
She made no answer.
‘Do you think I take this calamity as light-heartedly as you do, Amy?’
‘I am far from taking it light-heartedly.’
‘Yet you are in good health. I see no sign that you have suffered.’
She kept silence. Her suffering had been slight enough, and chiefly due to considerations of social propriety; but she would not avow this, and did not like to make admission of it to herself. Before her friends she frequently affected to conceal a profound sorrow; but so long as her child was left to her she was in no danger of falling a victim to sentimental troubles.
‘And certainly I can’t believe it,’ he continued, ‘now you declare your wish to be formally separated from me.’
‘I have declared no such wish.’
‘Indeed you have. If you can hesitate a moment about returning to me when difficulties are at an end, that tells me you would prefer final separation.’
‘I hesitate for this reason,’ Amy said after reflecting. ‘You are so very greatly changed from what you used to be, that I think it doubtful if I could live with you.’
‘Changed?—Yes, that is true, I am afraid. But how do you think this change will affect my behaviour to you?’
‘Remember how you have been speaking to me.’
‘And you think I should treat you brutally if you came into my power?’
‘Not brutally, in the ordinary sense of the word. But with faults of temper which I couldn’t bear. I have my own faults. I can’t behave as meekly as some women can.’
It was a small concession, but Reardon made much of it.
‘Did my faults of temper give you any trouble during the first year of our married life?’ he asked gently.
‘No,’ she admitted.
‘They began to afflict you when I was so hard driven by difficulties that I needed all your sympathy, all your forbearance. Did I receive much of either from you, Amy?’
‘I think you did—until you demanded impossible things of me.’
‘It was always in your power to rule me. What pained me worst, and hardened me against you, was that I saw you didn’t care to exert your influence. There was never a time when I could have resisted a word of yours spoken out of your love for me. But even then, I am afraid, you no longer loved me, and now—’
He broke off, and stood watching her face.
‘Have you any love for me left?’ burst from his lips, as if the words all but choked him in the utterance.
Amy tried to shape some evasive answer, but could say nothing.
‘Is there ever so small a hope that I might win some love from you again?’
‘If you wish me to come and live with you when you go to Croydon I will do so.’
‘But that is not answering me, Amy.’
‘It’s all I can say.’
‘Then you mean that you would sacrifice yourself out of—what? Out of pity for me, let us say.’
‘Do you wish to see Willie?’ asked Amy, instead of replying.
‘No. It is you I have come to see. The child is nothing to me, compared with you. It is you, who loved me, who became my wife— you only I care about. Tell me you will try to be as you used to be. Give me only that hope, Amy; I will ask nothing except that, now.’
‘I can’t say anything except that I will come to Croydon if you wish it.’
‘And reproach me always because you have to live in such a place, away from your friends, without a hope of the social success which was your dearest ambition?’
Her practical denial that she loved him wrung this taunt from his anguished heart. He repented the words as soon as they were spoken.
‘What is the good?’ exclaimed Amy in irritation, rising and moving away from him. ‘How can I pretend that I look forward to such a life with any hope?’
