I will--" But here sudden pain brought back the doubt concerning
his life and its possibilities.
He leaned against the bulwarks, and made a helpless, despairing motion
with his hand. "No, no!" he said; and added with a bitter laugh: "Not to
begin the world again, but to end it as profitably and silently as I can.
. . . But you will listen to me, my wife? You will say at least that you
forgive me the blight and ill I brought upon you?"
She had listened to him unmoved outwardly. Her reply was instant. "You
are more melodramatic than I thought you capable of being--from your
appearance," she said in a hard tone. "Your acting is very good, but not
convincing. I cannot respond as would become the unity and sequence of
the play. . . . I have no husband. My husband is dead--I buried him years
ago. I have forgotten his name--I buried that too."
All the suffering and endured scorn of years came to revolt in him. He
leaned forward now, and caught her wrist. "Have you no human feeling?" he
said "no heart in you at all? Look. I have it in me here suddenly to kill
you as you stand. You have turned my love to hate.
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