"No one does, so far as I can see," was the malicious answer. "I hear of no complaints from others, and certainly I have uttered none. You make a very satisfactory Lady Hurdly, and I suppose you get enough out of the position to repay you for anything you may have lost--at least, from the world's point of view, you should have done so."
Bettina did not answer at once. A sickness of soul was creeping over her that made all life look suddenly loathsome. The one feeble ray that penetrated the darkness in which she felt herself enveloped was the help that came from a certain ideal which she had recently enthroned in her own heart. As the world's need, the wider issues affecting the myriad lives beyond her own, had recently been brought before her consciousness, she had felt her way, as simply and weakly as a child might have done, to one plain principle of life--that it was worth while to try to be good. Never had she felt so keenly as in this minute the utter futility of hoping to be happy. Yet in this minute she felt more than ever, also, that happiness was not all.
It was only rarely that she had any personal talk with her husband. The wall of separation between them seemed to be thickening by silent accretion all the time. It was very difficult to scale this wall, and she felt that any effort to do so irked him no less than it did her. So, with an instinct not to let go the present opportunity, she said, rather eagerly, as he was rising to go away:
"Sit down a moment. We do not often speak together. I have something on my mind to say to you."
He resumed his seat and lighted a cigar--an action which discouraged her by its nonchalance. Still, she was determined to go on. By a great effort she made her voice very gentle, as she said:
"I know I have disappointed you in what you had hoped from this marriage between us, and I want to tell you I am very sorry. If I have not been able to give you the feeling which you desired--"
"Feeling?" he said. "Who wants feeling nowadays in a wife? No one expects it. I wanted some one to make a handsome figure as Lady Hurdly. I expected that you would do that, and you have not disappointed me."
"If this is true, I'm glad to know it," she said; "but, at any rate, you could not blame me for not giving you the love another woman might have given you. I never deceived you as to that. I told you I had not that love to give; not--as you have so unjustly hinted--because I had given it to another man, but because I was then incapable of love. I had no thought of any one beyond myself. I was miserably ignorant and egoistic. It was in ignorance and egoism that I took the position of your wife, but I think from the first that I have tried, as I could, to fulfil its obligations. I have tried to be and to appear what you would wish. And I am not unmindful of the honor and distinction which my marriage to you has conferred upon me."