“I’ve treated you as though you were made of porcelain. You know that. I’ve been a damned fool! And you thought I’d keep it up for ever! Heavens, don’t you know what a man’s like yet? What do you suppose I married you for? To look at? That’s what I’ve been doing for the past months. Do you realise that? Do you think it’s a natural state of affairs? Do you think it’s fair to me, this—this platonic arrangement of yours? What do you take me for, Elizabeth? An iceberg, like yourself? I’m not. Got that? And I’ve had enough of this life we’re leading! I thought if I were patient—hell, patient! —you’d come to me of your own free will.” Again he laughed. “Instead of that you take advantage of my patience, and draw farther away from me! Oh yes, you can look outraged, and if you like you can think yourself an insulted saint! But you’re not! You made a bargain with me when you married me, and now you refuse to fulfill your part of it. Yes, and I’m a brute to expect it of you, aren’t I? I ought to be satisfied with your presence in my home, thankful that you let me kiss you! When you find that I want more than that from my Wife, you think me unreasonable! You sit on your pinnacle of false righteousness and never see that you’re cheating me of what is my right!”

She had stopped struggling; she tried to cling to dignity, to stand straight and to face the flame of Stephen’s eyes.

But she was trembling from head to foot, from stark terror, and a sense of violated decency.

“I—never—dreamed you would—s-say such things—to me!” How her teeth chattered! She tried to smother the Fear, but it was too great. Were all men such primitive monsters as this? “Let me go! You Ye—you Ye hurting me! How dare you—say such things to—me? I think you Ye horrible—horrible!”

“I daresay you do. You’ve heard the truth for once, and it shocks you. And you’ve shown me that it’s folly— crass folly—to let a woman have her own way! The strong yielding to the weak!” Again she shrank from that ugly laugh. “I tell you, Elizabeth, it’s women like you who make men into beasts! That’s what you think me, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“Yes!” she cried. Dry sobs shook her. “Yes, yes, yes! You’re hateful, cruel, unjust!”