for while you and I were living one life, you at the same time, without
me, were living another. Then I understood this summer's comfortable
weekly good-byes, so different from other years! I think, down in the
bottom of my heart, I understood _all_ at _that moment_,--though I
wouldn't acknowledge it not even in secret to myself, and even when,
before another twenty-four hours had passed, my eyes were damnable
witnesses against you. I couldn't believe them, and doubt if I would
have if you had not confessed. Of course, I knew whenever we had guests
Jack Tolby was always one of them, and also one of the guests wherever
we went, but it only seemed natural. He was extremely agreeable in our
house; it's only now I realize he has always rather avoided me at the
club. I suppose even men like him have some sort of conscience, or at
least a sense of decency, if not of honor, toward their own friends,
and, if so, good God, how ashamed he must have been every time he had
to take my hand! And _you_, when you received my lips on yours, already
satiated with kisses in my absence! Ugh! Kate! Kate! how I hate you!
Yes, hate is the word. And to think _you_ are the mother of my
children! That is the _big_ hurt.

I want you to understand that what I am going to do is entirely for
their sake, not at all for yours. You who have been the first to drag
the name of Kennington in the public mud. Three honest generations of
us have kept it clean and honorable, and our wives have done the same
for us all down to you--all except my wife. I used to think that in
marrying me you had placed me deeper in your debt than I could ever
repay. Ever since the first time I saw you I loved you; and after that
meeting I put my arms about no woman--arms that had been free enough
before--until I put them around you. And since then the same. I have
been an absolutely faithful husband to you. Do you understand what that
means? I don't believe so. I preferred you to every other woman in the
world. When away from you, your memory guarded my embraces. Yet I am
not a romantic man. Now, for instance, I look at it all in a
straightforward light. I realize that you were a girl with no money and
no particular position in the world; and in marrying me you obtained
both. You have reveled in society--thanks to me and my family--and this
is the return you have made. You have dishonored us. Now listen; this
is what I propose doing. I do not intend to have my children suffer