Finding herself loth to open the door, she at last set her teeth and did it swiftly, as if to surprise someone within.  She did surprise some one:  her husband, sitting by his sister’s body.  He started violently on seeing her, and rose; whilst she, mechanically shutting the door without turning, leaned back against it with her hand behind her, and looked at him open-mouthed.

“Marian,” he said, in a quite unexpectedly apprehensive tone, putting up his hand deprecatingly:  “remember, here”—­indicating the figure on the bed—­“is an end of hypocrisy!  No unrealities now:  I cannot bear them.  Let us have no trash of magnanimous injured husband, erring but repentant wife.  We are man and woman, nothing less and nothing more.  After our marriage you declined intercourse on those terms; and I accepted your conventions to please you.  Now I refuse all conventions:  you have broken them yourself.  If you will not have the truth between us, avoid me until I have subsided into the old groove again.  There!” he added, wincing, “dont blush.  What have you to blush for?  It was the only honest thing you ever did.”

“I dont understand.”

“No,” he said gently, but with a gesture of despair; “how could you?  You never did, and you never will.”

“If you mean to accuse me of having deceived you,” said Marian, greatly relieved and encouraged by a sense of being now the injured party, “you are most unjust.  I dont excuse myself for behaving wickedly, but I never deceived you or told you a falsehood.  Never.  When he first spoke wrongly to me, I told you at once; and you did not care.”

“Not a straw.  It was nothing to me that he loved you:  the point was, did you love him?  If not, then all was well:  if so, our marriage was already at an end.  But you mistake my drift.  Falsehood is something more than fibbing.  You never told fibs—­except the two or three dozen a week that mere politeness required and which you never thought of counting; but you never told me the truth, Marian, because you never told your self the truth.  You told me what you told yourself, I grant you; and so you were not conscious of deceit.  I dont reproach you.  Surely you can bear to be told what every honest man tells himself almost daily.”

“I suppose I have deserved it,” said Marian; “but unkind words from you are a new experience.  You are very unlike yourself to-night.”

He repressed, with visible effort, an explosion of impatience.  “On the contrary, I am like myself—­I actually am myself to-night, I hope.”  Then the explosion came.  “Is it utterly impossible for you to say something real to me?  Only learn to do that, and you may have ten love romances every year with other men, if you like.  Be anything rather than a ladylike slave and liar.  There! as usual, the truth makes you shrink from me.  As I said before, I refuse further intercourse on such terms.  They have proved unkind in the long run.”