She had reasoned the matter well out, making it
perfectly clear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but
for all this she was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her
fear; but she was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be
ashamed of. He looked at her with his stiff insistence, an
insistence in which there was such a want of tact; especially when the
dull dark beam in his eye rested on her as a physical weight.
"No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I
could! he candidly declared.
"I thank you immensely."
"I'd rather think of you as dead than as married to another man."
"That's very selfish of you!" she returned with the ardour of a real
conviction. "If you're not happy yourself others have yet a right to
be."
"Very likely it's selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying
so. I don't mind anything you can say now- I don't feel it. The
cruellest things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After
what you've done I shall never feel anything- I mean anything but
that. That I shall feel all my life."
Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness,
in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour
over propositions intrinsically crude.
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