Prudence turned away from him to conceal the quivering of her lips, but her voice was steady when she answered despite the wild beating of her heart.
“I loved him,” she said simply, “and he loved me. There was that between us. But he went away, and I thought—he had forgotten.”
A long silence fell between them, a heavy silence. In all his life Edward Morgan had never received such a blow to his pride as this. She had dealt him a blow before when she sought to break their engagement; but that was trifling as compared with this—this brazen confession of love for another man. She had never loved him—her husband. She had been in love with another man all these years.
“And yet you married me!” he said in a hard voice, snapping the silence abruptly.
Had she not been goaded past endurance, Prudence, would not have said what she did say; she was ashamed of it later. But his manner and his clumsy insistence irritated her into retorting.
“At least I tried to evade doing you that injury,” she said.
His face became purple with anger. Nothing she could have planned to say could have enraged him more than that cutting reminder at such a time of her reluctance to become his wife.
“You did,” he shouted, and smote the table beside which he stood so violently that the glasses on it jingled and the water was spilled again. This time he allowed it to remain; he appeared not to see it in his outburst of noisy passion. “But you weren’t honest with me even then. You concealed this thing from me deliberately. You deceived me. I believed you were a simple-hearted girl whose love I could win with kindness. And I was kind to you. I have tried to be kind always—though God knows! I received small return. Do you suppose I would have married you had you told me that you loved another man? I could feel some respect for you had you persisted in your refusal; I feel none for you now. It was an evil day for me when you married me.”
“It was the one big mistake of my life,” she answered, and turned and faced him fully, with blue eyes aflame with anger, her head lifted proudly, almost aggressively, her face expressing cold dislike. She had never loved Edward Morgan, but she had not until then actively disliked him. His blustering anger, and his ill-considered taunts repelled her. “If you care to have a separation I am quite agreeable. I think we shall be happier apart.”
“I don’t doubt you would like that,” he said brutally. “To be free to gallivant in your frivolous way at my expense, and under the protection of my name! I prefer to exercise full control over my wife. You are my wife, remember. Nothing’s going to alter that. And since you bear my name I will see that you respect it. There’s going to be no scandal in this family. Separation! So that’s what you are after! Good God! I would sooner see you lying dead in your coffin than that you should disgrace the name of Morgan by dragging it into the courts.”