e is at an end. I
suppose you meant that when you kindly reminded me that it was your
money I have been living on. Very well. Let it be as you wish."

Cecily regarded him with resentful wonder.

"Do you dare to speak as if it were I who had brought this about?"

Reuben was not the man to act emotion and contrive scenes. Whenever it
might have seemed that he did so, he was, in truth, yielding to the
sudden revulsions which were characteristic of his passionate nature.
In him, harshness and unreason inevitably led to a reaction in which
all the softer of his qualities rose predominant. So it was now. Those
last words of his were not consciously meant to give him an opportunity
of changing his standpoint. Inconstant, incapable of self-direction, at
the mercy of the moment's will, he could foresee himself just as little
as another could foresee him. His impetuous being prompted him to utter
sincerely what a man of adroit insincerity would have spoken with
calculation.

"Yes," he exclaimed, "it _is_ you who have done most towards it!"

"By what act? what word?" she asked, in astonishment.

"By all your acts and words for the year past, and longer. You had
practically abandoned me long before you went abroad. When you
discovered that I was not everything you imagined, when you found
faults and weaknesses in me, you began to draw away, to be cold and
indifferent, to lose all interest in whatever I did or wished to do.
When I was working, you showed plainly that you had no faith in my
powers; it soon cost you an effort even to listen to me when I talked
on the subject. I looked to you for help, and I found none. Could I say
anything? The help had to come spontaneously, or it was no use. Then
you gave yourself up entirely to the child; you were glad of that
excuse for keeping out of my way. If I was away from home for a day or
two, you didn't even care to ask what I had been doing; that was what
proved to me how completely indifferent you had become. And when you
went abroad, what a pretence it was to ask me to come with you! I knew
quite well that you had much rather be without me. And how did you
suppose I should live during your absence? You never thought about it,
never cared to think. Don't imagine I am blaming you. Everything was at
an end between us, and which of us could help it? But it is as well to
show you that I am not the cause of all that has happened. You have no
justification whatever for this tone of offen