It left him not the slightest doubt that she was honest.
He said, dully, in a feeble attempt to right himself:
"You are shielding him. You want to make me out wrong." But she
knew he knew.
"Those are the facts. Heaven knows they are bad enough, but they
are by no means so bad as you thought. And I'm your wife, Stephen.
That thing you did was brutal; those men will talk. I was guilty,
no doubt, in my thoughts, but I'm young, and you have no right to
blight my life and my reputation--yes, and yours--by a thing like
that. We will have to meet those men. What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he said. "In all my life I never felt but one
moment of power, and that, it seems, was false. For years I have
longed to show myself a man, and now--what have I done? What have
I done? I am no monster." He moaned and sank limply into a chair,
folding together in an attitude of dejection that was pitiful. He
raised his head and broke out at her in a last spasm of
desperation, as a dying ember flares even while it crumbles. "My
God! why couldn't you be consistent? Why did you go half-way? Why
couldn't you be all good or all bad and save me this?"
"All women are half good and half bad."
"I can't blame you for not loving me, I suppose," he mumbled.
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