His married life had been unhappy. His wife had not
submitted either to his will or to his ways. He had that great desire
to enjoy his full rights, so strong in the minds of weak, ambitious
men, and he had told himself that a wife's obedience was one of those
rights which he could not abandon without injury to his self-esteem.
He had thought about the matter, slowly, as was his wont, and had
resolved that he would assert himself. He had asserted himself, and
his wife told him to his face that she would go away and leave him.
He could detain her legally, but he could not do even that without
the fact of such forcible detention being known to all the world.
How was he to answer her now at this moment, so that she might not
write to her father, and so that his self-assertion might still be
maintained?
"Passion, Laura, can never be right."
"Would you have a woman submit to insult without passion? I at any
rate am not such a woman." Then there was a pause for a moment. "If
you have nothing else to say to me, you had better leave me. I am far
from well, and my head is throbbing."
He came up and took her hand, but she snatched it away from him.
"Laura," he said, "do not let us quarrel."
"I certainly shall quarrel if such insinuations are repeated.
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