His desire was to impress Amy with the bitter
intensity of his sufferings; pathos and loving words seemed to
have lost their power upon her, but perhaps if he yielded to that
other form of passion she would be shaken out of her coldness.
The stress of injured love is always tempted to speech which
seems its contradiction. Reardon had the strangest mixture of
pain and pleasure in flinging out these first words of wrath that
he had ever addressed to Amy; they consoled him under the
humiliating sense of his weakness, and yet he watched with dread
his wife's countenance as she listened to him. He hoped to cause
her pain equal to his own, for then it would be in his power at
once to throw off this disguise and soothe her with every softest
word his heart could suggest. That she had really ceased to love
him he could not, durst not, believe; but his nature demanded
frequent assurance of affection. Amy had abandoned too soon the
caresses of their ardent time; she was absorbed in her maternity,
and thought it enough to be her husband's friend. Ashamed to make
appeal directly for the tenderness she no longer offered, he
accused her of utter indifference, of abandoning him and all but
betraying him, that in self-defence she might show what really
was in her heart.
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