under a repressive law which he was forced to
acknowledge: he was dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the
decisive vibration. In flute-like tones of sarcasm she said,
    »You can easily go after Mrs. Casaubon and explain your preference.«
    »Go after her!« he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice. »Do you think
she would turn to look at me, or value any word I ever uttered to her again at
more than a dirty feather? - Explain! How can a man explain at the expense of a
woman?«
    »You can tell her what you please,« said Rosamond, with more tremor.
    »Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you? She is not a
woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable - to believe that I must
be true to her because I was a dastard to you.«
    He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal that sees prey
but cannot reach it. Presently he burst out again -
    »I had no hope before - not much - of anything better to come. But I had one
certainty - that she believed in me. Whatever people had said or done about me,
she believed in me. - That's gone! She'll never again think me anything but a
paltry pretence - too nice to take heaven except upon flattering conditions, and
yet selling myself for any devil's change by the sly. She'll think of me as an
incarnate insult to her, from the first moment we ....«
    Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that must not be
thrown and shattered. He found another vent for his rage by snatching up
Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to be throttled and flung off.
    »Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my
preference! I never had a preference for her, any more than I have a preference
for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch
her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.«
    Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was almost
losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking into some new terrible
existence. She had no sense of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent
self-justification such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy
displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain;
she felt a