"And you can't face it!" he said. He laid a hand firmly upon hers where it rested upon the back of the chair. "My dear... you can't face it... I can't face it. I've looked at the matter all round; and I can't face parting now any better than I could face renunciation five years ago. It's out of the question. It can't be, Pamela. We've gone a long way beyond that." "But the other thing,--to stay,--that's impossible too." "No," he asserted. "That's the only thing left us. Except for the compunction I feel in the pain this knowledge has brought you, it hasn't altered anything for me. I'm trying to look at it from your point of view. The relative values of our position are not changed for me, you see. When you have recovered from the shock of the revelation, I'm hoping you will see things as I do. Nothing is altered really. I have regarded you always sacredly as my dear wife. You will ever remain so to me. Nothing can alter that." "But I am not your wife," Pamela said. "Do you think I can ever forget that, now I know? Every time that my eyes meet yours that thought will be in my mind... not you wife,--only your--" "Don't say it," he said sharply, and gripped her hand hard. "You are my wife." He spoke with a certain obstinacy, as though his purpose were to insist on her imagination taking hold of realities which she sought to overlook, which were none the less realities to him because he justified them by his own standard in defiance of conventional law. "I'm not going to give you up, Pamela. I'm going to keep you. If you left me I should follow you. Don't you see that parting for us is impossible? If we loved less it might be easy to talk of parting,--easy to assume a smug respectability, and give up a little for the satisfaction of feeling virtuous. But people don't give up everything for the sake of virtue--and to part now would be giving up everything for you and me." "But I can't," she insisted, "continue to live here--as your wife. It's not only a case of conscience, it's a matter of self-respect. I should _hate_ myself." This was a fresh issue. He had not foreseen this, and he realised his inadequacy to grasp the point; it was too intrinsically feminine for his understanding. He stared at her in baffled perplexity. "Do you mean," he began, and paused, scrutinising her tortured face with disconcerted, incredulous eyes. He stood up, and moved away from her, and remained with his back to her, facing the window. Then abruptly he faced round again. "What do you want to do?" he asked, his nerves on edge with the intolerable strain. "For God's sake, be reasonable! I can't stand this any longer. Do you mean that you want to leave me?"