Your love hasn't
stood the test as it should have done. You have given me no help;
besides the burden of cheerless work I have had to bear that of
your growing coldness. I can't remember one instance when you
have spoken to me as a wife might--a wife who was something more
than a man's housekeeper.'
The passion in his voice and the harshness of the accusation made
her unable to reply.
'You said rightly,' he went on, 'that I have always been kind and
gentle. I never thought I could speak to you or feel to you in
any other way. But I have undergone too much, and you have
deserted me. Surely it was too soon to do that. So long as I
endeavoured my utmost, and loved you the same as ever, you might
have remembered all you once said to me. You might have given me
help, but you haven't cared to.'
The impulses which had part in this outbreak were numerous and
complex. He felt all that he expressed, but at the same time it
seemed to him that he had the choice between two ways of uttering
his emotion--the tenderly appealing and the sternly reproachful:
he took the latter course because it was less natural to him than
the former.
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