Page:Love and Mr. Lewisham – Wells (1899).djvu/296

284 spoke again his voice was hoarse. He reverted to a former formula. "Look here," he said, and cleared his throat. "I don't know whether you think I'm going to stand this, but I'm not."

He looked at her. She sat staring in front of her, making no attempt to cope with disaster.

"When I say I'm not going to stand it," explained Lewisham, "I don't mean having a row or anything of that sort. One can quarrel and be disappointed over—other things—and still go on. But this is a different thing altogether.

"Of all dreams and illusions! Think what I have lost in this accursed marriage. And now  You don't understand—you won't understand."

"Nor you," said Ethel, weeping but neither looking at him nor moving her hands from her lap where they lay helplessly. "You don't understand."

"I'm beginning to."

He sat in silence gathering force. "In one year," he said, "all my hopes, all my ambitions have gone. I know I have been cross and irritable—I know that. I've been pulled two ways. But I bought you these roses."

She looked at the roses, and then at his white face, made an imperceptible movement towards him, and became impassive again.

"I do think one thing. I have found out you are