stance to have taken
up his hat and gone away; but he had felt no impulse to do this; on the
contrary, he had a horrible inclination to stay and shatter Rosamond
with his anger. It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality she had
drawn down on him without venting his fury as it would be to a panther
to bear the javelin-wound without springing and biting. And yet--how
could he tell a woman that he was ready to curse her? He was fuming
under a repressive law which he was forced to acknowledge: he was
dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the decisive
vibration. In flute-like tones of sarcasm she said--

"You can easily go after Mrs. Casaubon and explain your preference."

"Go after her!" he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice. "Do you
think she would turn to look at me, or value any word I ever uttered to
her again at more than a dirty feather?--Explain! How can a man
explain at the expense of a woman?"

"You can tell her what you please," said Rosamond with more tremor.

"Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you? She is
not a woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable--to
believe that I must be true to her because I was a dastard to you."

He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal that sees
prey but cannot reach it. Presently he burst out again--

"I had no hope before--not much--of anything better to come. But I had
one certainty--that she believed in me. Whatever people had said or
done about me, she believed in me.--That's gone! She'll never again
think me anything but a paltry pretence--too nice to take heaven
except upon flattering conditions, and yet selling myself for any
devil's change by the sly. She'll think of me as an incarnate insult
to her, from the first moment we--"

Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that must
not be thrown and shattered. He found another vent for his rage by
snatching up Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to be
throttled and flung off.

"Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my
preference! I never had a _preference_ for her, any more than I have a
preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I
would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any
other woman's living."

Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was
almost losing the sense of her identity, and seeme