LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM
weeping, and her face, save about the eyes, was white.
He presented it in another form. "I shall go away.
"We never ought to have married," he reflected. "But. . . I never expected this!"
"I didn't know," she cried out, lifting up her voice. "I didn't know. How could I help! Oh!"
She stopped and stared at him with hands clenched, her eyes haggard with despair.
Lewisham remained impenetrably malignant.
"I don't want to know," he said, answering her dumb appeal. "That settles everything. That!" He indicated the scattered flowers. "What does it matter to me what has happened or hasn't happened? Anyhow—oh! I don't mind. I'm glad. See? It settles things.
"The sooner we part the better. I shan't stop with you another night. I shall take my box and my portmanteau into that room and pack. I shall stop in there to-night, sleep in a chair or think. And to-morrow I shall settle up with Madam Gadow and go. You can go back. . . to your cheating."
He stopped for some seconds. She was deadly still. "You wanted to, and now you may. You wanted to, before I got work. You remember? You know your place is still open at Lagune's. I don't care. I tell you I don't care that. Not that! You may go your own way—and I shall go mine. See? And all this rot-this sham of living together when neither cares for the other—I don't care for you now, you know, so you needn't think it—will be over and done with. As for marriage—I don't care
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