"That is the symbol of my married life," she said with a curious enforced
calm. She let her sleeve fall back into its place. "Did you never hear?
Dene drank--it was no secret. He was quite mad at times."
"And he--ill-treated you?"
"When it amused him. He had a passion for cruelty. I never knew it till I
married him. I found out afterwards he had been the same even as a child.
He loved torturing things." She paused, then added with a simplicity that
was infinitely pitiful: "So you see, I had my punishment."
"I was abroad. I never knew," said Eliot, as though in extenuation of
something of which he inwardly accused himself. "I never knew," he repeated
resentfully. "By God!"--with a sudden suppressed violence which was the
more intense by reason of its enforced restraint--"if I'd known, I'd have
freed the woman I once loved from degradation such as that!"
Used so unconsciously, without intent, the word "once" wounded her more
cruelly than any of his deliberately harsh and bitter utterances had had
power to do. It set her definitely outside his life, relegated her to a
past that was dead and done with--made her realise more completely than
anything else could have done that, as far as Eliot was concerned, she no
longer counted in his scheme of existence.
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