"But I think there is. Of late, your manner towards me has been more than strange. If you complain of anything, let me know what it is, and it shall be rectified. At the present moment, I confess, I fail to understand you. You speak in the most absurdly romantic way about Ruth Annersley (whom you hardly knew), as though there existed some special reason why you, above all women, should pity her." "I do pity her from my heart; and there is a special reason: she has been deceived, and so have I." "By whom?" "I wish you would discontinue the subject, Dorian: it is a very painful one to me, if--if not to you." Then she moves back a little, and, laying her hand upon her chest, as though a heavy weight, not to be lifted, is lying there, she says, slowly, "You compel me to say what I would willingly leave unsaid. When I married you, I did not understand your character; had I done so----" "You would not have married me? You regret your marriage?" He is very pale now, and something that is surely anguish gleams in his dark eyes. Perhaps had she seen his expression her answer would have been different, or, at least, more merciful. "I do," she says, faintly. "Why?" All heart seems gone from his voice. He is gazing mournfully upon the girlish figure of his wife as she stands at some little distance from him. "Have I been such a bad husband to you, Georgie?" he says, brokenly. "No, no. But it is possible to be cruel in more ways than one." "It is, indeed!" Then he sighs wearily; and, giving up all further examination of her lovely unforgiving face, he turns his gaze upon the fire. "Look here," he says, presently; "I heard unavoidably what you said to Kennedy that afternoon at the castle, that we could manage to get on without each other excellently well on occasion: you alluded to yourself, I suppose. Perhaps you think we might get on even better had we never met." "I didn't say that," says Georgie, turning pale. "I understand,"--bitterly: "you only meant it. Well, if you are so unhappy with me, and if--if you wish for a separation, I think I can manage it for you. I have no desire whatever"--coldly--"to keep you with me against your will." "And have all the world talking?" exclaims she, hastily. "No. In such a case the woman goes to the wall: the man is never in fault. Things must now remain as they are. But this one last thing you can do for me. As far as is possible, let us live as utter strangers to each other." "It shall be just as you please," returns he, haughtily. * * * * * Day by day the dark cloud that separates them widens and deepens, drifting them farther and farther apart, until it seems almost impossible that they shall ever come together again. Dorian grows moody and irritable, and nurses his wrongs in sullen morbid silence. He will shoot whole days without a companion, or go for long purposeless rides across country, only to return at nightfall weary and sick at heart.