Part 90 (1/2)

”Oh, let us leave _hearts_ out of the discussion,” cries t.i.ta scornfully. ”And, indeed, why should we have any discussions? Why need we talk to each other at all? This interview”-- clenching her handkerchief into a ball--”what has it done for us? It has only made us both wretched!” She takes a step nearer to him. ”Do--do promise me you will not seek another.”

”I cannot promise you that.”

”No?” She turns back again. ”Well--go away now, at all events,” says she, sighing.

”Not until I have said what is on my mind,” says Rylton, with determination.

”Well, say it”--frowning.

”I will! You are my wife, and I am your husband, and I think it is your _duty_ to live with me.”

She looks at him for a long time, as if thinking.

”I'll tell you what you think,” says she slowly, ”that it will add to your respectability in the eyes of your world to have your wife living in _your_ house, and not in Margaret's.”

”I don't expect to be generously judged by you,” says he. ”But even as you put it there is sense in it. If our world----”

”Yours! yours!” interrupts she angrily--that old wound had always rankled. ”It is not my world! I have nothing to do with it. I do not belong to it. Your mother showed me that, even so long ago as when we were first”--there is a little perceptible hesitation--”married”.

_”Hang_ my mother!” says Rylton violently. ”I tell you my world is your world, and if not--well, then I have no desire to belong to it.

The question is, t.i.ta, will you consent to forget--and--and forgive--and”--with a sudden plunge--”make it up with me?”

He would have taken her hand here, but she slips adroitly behind a small table.

”Say it is for respectability's sake, if you like, that I ask you to return to me,” goes on Rylton, a little daunted, however, by her determined entrenchment; ”though it is not. Still----”

She stops him.

”It is no use,” says she. ”Don't go on. I cannot. I _will_ not. I,”

her lips quiver slightly--”I was _too_ unhappy with you. And I should always think of----” Her voice dies away.

Rylton is thinking, too, of last night, and that terrible interview with Marian. A feeling of hatred towards her grows within him. She had played with him--killed all that was best in him, and then flung him aside. She had let him go for the moment--only to return and spoil whatever good the world had left him. Her face rises before him pleading, seductive; and here is the other face--angry, scornful. Oh, dear little angry face! How fair, how pure, and how beloved!

”I tell you,” says he, breaking out vehemently, ”that all that is at an end--if I ever loved her.” He forgets everything now, and, catching her hands, holds them tightly in his own. ”Give me another trial,” entreats he.

”No, no!” She speaks as if choking, but for all that she draws her hands out of his. ”It would be madness. You would tire. We should tire of each other in a week--where there is no love. No, no!”

”You refuse, then?”

”I refuse!”

”t.i.ta----”

She turns upon him pa.s.sionately.

”I _won't_ listen. It is useless. You”--a sob breaks from her--”why _don't_ you go!” she cries a little wildly.

”This is not good-bye,” says he desperately. ”You will let me come again? Margaret, I know, receives on Sundays. _Say_ I may come then.”