The gross irrational exaggeration drove him to worse bitterness. "I've no intention of running even the smallest risk of being party to the murder of my wife," he retorted. Lying among her pillows, very pale and weary, she pronounced the accusation which had so long brooded in her mind. "It's not because you love me so much; you do love me in a way: I please you, you're proud of me, you like me to be there, you like to make love to me, you like taking all I have to give you, and God knows I liked to give it--but you haven't given the same thing back to me, Grantley. I don't know whether you've got it to give to anybody, but at any rate you haven't given it to me. I haven't become part of you, as I was ready to become--as I've already become of my little unborn child. Your life wouldn't be made really different if I went away. In the end you've been apart from me. I thought the coming of the child must make all that different; but it hasn't: you've been about the child just as you've been about me." "Oh, where on earth do you get such notions?" he exclaimed. "Just the same as about me. You wanted me and you wanted a child too. But you wanted both with--well, with the least disturbance of your old self and your old thoughts: with the least trouble--it almost comes to that really. I don't know how to put it, except like that. You enjoyed the pleasant parts very much, but you take as little as you can of the troublesome ones. I suppose a lot of people are--are like that. Only it's a--a little unfortunate that you should have happened on me, because I--I can't understand being like that. To me it seems somehow rather cruel. So, knowing you're like that, I can't believe you when you tell me that you think of nothing but your love for me. I daresay you think it's true--I know you wouldn't say it if you didn't think it true; and in a way it's true. But the real, real truth is----" She paused, and for the first time turned her eyes on him. "The real truth is not that you love me too much to do what I ask." "What else can it be?" he cried desperately, utterly puzzled and upset by her accusation. "What else can it be? Ah, yes, what else?" Her voice grew rather more vehement. "I can answer that. What have I been doing these five months but learning the answer to that? I'll tell you. It's not that you love me so much, it's that you don't care about the child." The words brought a suspicion into his mind. "That old fool Mrs. Mumple has been talking to you? She's been repeating something I said? Well, I expressed it carelessly, awkwardly, but----" "What does it matter what Mumples has repeated? I knew it all before." "Meddlesome old idiot!" he grumbled fiercely.