Either way it was not what was fair and just; yet I had to bear
and suffer, not you. There is no pain like it. There I was in misery
and--"
A bitter smile came to his lips. "A woman can endure a good deal when
she has all life's luxuries in her grasp. Did you ever think, Mona, that
a man must suffer when he goes out into a world where he knows no one,
penniless, with no trade, no profession, nothing except his own helpless
self? He might have stayed behind among the luxuries that belonged to
another, and eaten from the hand of his wife's charity, but"--(all the
pride and pain of the old situation rose up in him, impelled by the
brooding of the years of separation, heightened by the fact that he was
no nearer to his goal of financial independence of her than he was when
he left London five years before)--"but do you think, no matter what I've
done, broken a pledge or not, been in the wrong a thousand times as much
as I was, that I'd be fed by the hand of one to whom I had given a pledge
and broken it? Do you think that I'd give her the chance to say, or not
to say, but only think, 'I forgive you; I will give you your food and
clothes and board and bed, but if you are not good in the future, I will
be very, very angry with you'? Do you think--?"
His face was flaming now.
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