there was an unknown furrow along her forehead, and she glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw.
‘Do as YOU think fit? Indeed!’
Could Amy’s voice sound like that? Great Heaven! With just such accent he had heard a wrangling woman retort upon her husband at the street corner. Is there then no essential difference between a woman of this world and one of that? Does the same nature lie beneath such unlike surfaces?
He had but to do one thing: to seize her by the arm, drag her up from the chair, dash her back again with all his force—there, the transformation would be complete, they would stand towards each other on the natural footing. With an added curse perhaps— Instead of that, he choked, struggled for breath, and shed tears.
Amy turned scornfully away from him. Blows and a curse would have overawed her, at all events for the moment; she would have felt: ‘Yes, he is a man, and I have put my destiny into his hands.’ His tears moved her to a feeling cruelly exultant; they were the sign of her superiority. It was she who should have wept, and never in her life had she been further from such display of weakness.
This could not be the end, however, and she had no wish to terminate the scene. They stood for a minute without regarding each other, then Reardon faced to her.
‘You refuse to live with me, then?’
‘Yes, if this is the kind of life you offer me.’
‘You would be more ashamed to share your husband’s misfortunes than to declare to everyone that you had deserted him?’
‘I shall “declare to everyone” the simple truth. You have the opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation. You refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a lower rank of life. I can’t and won’t consent to that. The disgrace is yours; it’s fortunate for me that I have a decent home to go to.’
‘Fortunate for you!—you make yourself unutterably contemptible. I have done nothing that justifies you in leaving me. It is for me to judge what I can do and what I can’t. A good woman would see no degradation in what I ask of you. But to run away from me just because I am poorer than you ever thought I should be—’
He was incoherent. A thousand passionate things that he wished to say clashed together in his mind and confused his speech. Defeated in the attempt to act like a strong man, he could not yet recover standing-ground, knew not how to tone his utterances.
‘Yes, of course, that’s how you will put it,’ said Amy. ‘That’s how you will represent me to your friends. My friends will see it in a different light.’
‘They will regard you as a martyr?’
‘No one shall make a martyr of me, you may be sure. I was unfortunate enough to marry a man who had no delicacy, no regard for my feelings.—I am not the first woman who has made a mistake of this kind.’
‘No delicacy? No regard for your feelings?—Have I always utterly misunderstood you? Or has poverty changed you to a woman I can’t recognise?’
He came nearer, and gazed desperately into her face. Not a muscle of it showed susceptibility to the old influences.
‘Do you know, Amy,’ he added in a lower voice, ‘that if we part now, we part for ever?’
‘I’m afraid that is only too likely.’
She moved aside.
‘You mean that you wish it. You are weary of me, and care for nothing but how to make yourself free.’
‘I shall argue no more. I am tired to death of it.’
‘Then say nothing, but listen for the last time to my view of the position we have come to. When I consented to leave you for a time, to go away and try to work in solitude, I was foolish and even insincere, both to you and to myself. I knew that I was undertaking the impossible. It was just putting off the evil day, that was all—putting off the time when I should have to say plainly: “I can’t live by literature, so I must look out for some other employment.” I shouldn’t have been so weak but that I knew how you would regard such a decision as that. I was afraid to tell the truth—afraid. Now, when Carter of a sudden put this opportunity before me, I saw all the absurdity of the arrangements we had made. It didn’t take me a moment to make up my mind. Anything was to be chosen rather than a parting from you on false pretences, a ridiculous affectation of hope where there was no hope.’
He paused, and saw that his words had no effect upon her.
‘And a grievous share of the fault lies with you, Amy. You remember very well when I first saw how dark the future was. I was driven even to say that we ought to change our mode of living; I asked you if you would be willing to leave this place and go into cheaper rooms. And you know what your answer was. Not a sign in you that you would stand by me if the worst came. I knew then what I had to look forward to, but I durst not believe it. I kept saying to myself: “She loves me, and as soon as she really understands—” That was all self-deception. If I had been a wise man, I should have spoken to you in a way you couldn’t mistake. I should have told you that we were living recklessly, and that I had determined to alter it. I have no delicacy? No regard for your feelings? Oh, if I had had less! I doubt whether you can even understand some of the considerations that weighed with me, and made me cowardly—though I once thought there was no refinement of sensibility that you couldn’t enter into. Yes, I was absurd enough to say to myself: “It will look as if I had consciously deceived her; she may suffer from the thought that I won her at all hazards, knowing that I should soon expose her to poverty and all sorts of humiliation.” Impossible to speak of that again; I had to struggle desperately on, trying to hope. Oh! if you knew—’
His voice gave way for an instant.
‘I don’t understand how you could be so thoughtless and heartless. You knew that I was almost mad with anxiety at times. Surely, any woman must have had the impulse to give what help was in her power. How could you hesitate? Had you no suspicion of what a relief and encouragement it would be to me, if you said: “Yes, we must go and live in a simpler way?” If only as a proof that you loved me, how I should have welcomed that! You helped me in nothing. You threw all the responsibility upon me—always bearing in mind, I suppose, that there was a refuge for you. Even now, I despise myself for saying such things of you, though I know so bitterly that they are true. It takes a long time to see you as such a different woman from the one I worshipped. In passion, I can fling out violent words, but they don’t yet answer to my actual feeling. It will be long enough yet before I think contemptuously of you. You know that when a light is suddenly extinguished, the image of it still shows before your eyes. But at last
