Dr. Adriaan Part 37

"Because I love you."

"Because you love me!" she echoed, curtly. "Because I'm good enough ...

for that!"

Her eyes flashed.

"Tilly!" he implored.

It was as though a sudden terror blinded him, as though a spectre of guilt suddenly loomed up out of all the black self-insufficiency of the last few years, his years of married life.

"Because I'm good enough ... to bear you children. Because you want to have children by me, healthy children, children different from your family, your mother's family."

"Tilly!"

"Addie!" she entreated. "Love me! Love me!"

"I do love you, Tilly!" he cried, in despair. "Love me altogether!"

"I do love you altogether!" he lied, in anguish for her sake.

"No, you love me ... half!"

"That's not so!"

"Yes, it is, you know it is!... I want to be loved by you altogether and not only...."

"Hush, Tilly," he entreated, in dismay. "Tilly, don't let us spoil our happiness!"

"Our happiness!" she laughed, scornfully.

"Aren't we happy then?"

And he tried to force her to say yes, but she was suffering too much and exclaimed:

"No, I am not happy! When I embrace you...." she clutched her fingers.

"When I have embraced you," she went on, "it's over, it's over, it's over at once; I feel that you are far away from me again; that you don't love me."

"I do love you, I do love you!"

"Then talk to me."

"I do."

"No, talk to me as you talk to Mary."

"But, Tilly, I talk to her ... to calm her."

"That's a lie!"

"Tilly!"

"It's a lie!... You talk to her ... you talk to her because you're in love with her!"

"Tilly, stop that!"

"Not as you are with me ... but differently."

Suddenly he grasped her wrist. She knew his sudden bursts of anger. They were very rare; but she knew them. And, because he was dazzled by the sudden light that shone from her, because from all the gloom of his self-insufficiency a consciousness of guilt came looming up to frighten him:

"And now, silence!" he cried, shaking her arm. "Silence! I command it!"

He no longer knew things. Life whirled dizzily before him, deep as a black abyss.

He stood in front of her on the lonely road; and it was as though his grey eyes flashed lightning, shooting blue spark after blue spark of rage and pain. His whole face quivered, his body quivered, his voice quivered with rage and pain. She felt a furious resistance rise within her ... together with black despair. She felt an impulse to rush into his arms, to sob out her sorrow on his heart. But she did not want his caresses: she wanted the thing that escaped her. It was escaping her now; and, when she said it, when she said it straight out, he commanded her to be silent, not to say it. Wasn't it his fault, wasn't it his fault? Wasn't _she_ right?

She released her hand:

"You don't love me," she said, curtly.

"No. When you speak to me like that, I don't. I'm not in love with Marietje. I'm sorry for her."

His voice was very calm and full of feeling; and she, also grown calmer, answered:

"You feel for her."

"I do."

"Well, then...."

"But you have no right to bring that up against me. I don't grant you that right ... because, Tilly...."

"Right, right? What rights have I? I have no rights!.. I live in your house on sufferance."

"Tilly, be careful!"

"Why should I?"

"You're destroying our happiness."

"It doesn't exist."

"Yes, it does ... if...."

He pa.s.sed his hand over his head. There was a cold wind blowing; and the beads of perspiration stood on his forehead.

"If you would be reasonable."

"And share you?"