He wondered if it were possible to appeal once more to her
better feelings. At all events he would make the attempt. The signature
he had forced out of Larssen had given him back some of his
self-respect, and he felt his brain as it were cleared for action once
more.
When Olive had finished, Matheson asked her quietly: "Why did you marry
me?"
"Why did you marry _me_?" she retorted.
"Because I honestly believed at the time that I loved you."
"I suppose you found out afterwards that you'd made a mistake, and then
blamed it on to me?"
"I'm not blaming you--I'm trying to get the right perspective on to our
marriage. I'm wondering if the woman I loved was yourself, or merely my
idealization of you."
"I can't help it if I'm not the incarnation of all the virtues you
imagined me to be!" Olive sat down and played nervously with a
penholder, jabbing meaningless lines and dots on to a loose sheet of
paper.
"When I married you, I thought you were in sympathy with me over the big
things of life--the things that matter. But you turned them aside with a
laugh. That put a barrier between us."
"I never could stand prigs. I thought I was marrying a man of the
world."
"We seemed to be radically opposed in ideas. We drifted farther and
farther away from one another. At the end of five years, our marriage
was empty even of tepid affection. If there had been children,
perhaps...."
"No doubt you'd have wanted to wheel them out in the perambulator!"
Matheson let the flippancy pass.
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