She looked at the roses, and then at his white face, made an imperceptible movement towards him, and became impassive again.
"I do think one thing. I have found out you are shallow, you don't think, you can't feel things that I think and feel. I have been getting over that. But I did think you were loyal--"
"And you think--Bah!--you poke my roses under the table!"
Another portentous silence. Ethel stirred and he turned his eyes to watch what she was about to do. She produced her handkerchief and began to wipe her dry eyes rapidly, first one and then the other. Then she began sobbing. "I'm ... as loyal as you ... anyhow," she said.
For a moment Lewisham was aghast. Then he perceived he must ignore that argument.
"I would have stood it--I would have stood anything if you had been loyal--if I could have been sure of you. I am a fool, I know, but I would have stood the interruption of my work, the loss of any hope of a Career, if I had been sure you were loyal. I ... I cared for you a great deal."
He stopped. He had suddenly perceived the pathetic. He took refuge in anger.
"And you have deceived me! How long, how much, I don't care. You have deceived me. And I tell you"--he began to gesticulate--"I'm not so much your slave and fool as to stand that! No woman shall make me _that_ sort of fool, whatever else--So far as I am concerned, this ends things. This ends things. We are married--but I don't care if we were married five hundred times. I won't stop with a woman who takes flowers from another man--"
Lewisham gave way to a transport of anger. He caught up a handful of roses and extended them, trembling. "What's _this_?" he asked. His finger bled from a thorn, as once it had bled from a blackthorn spray.
"I _didn't_ take them," said Ethel. "I couldn't help it if they were sent."
"Ugh!" said Lewisham. "But what is the good of argument and denial? You took them in, you had them. You may have been cunning, but you have given yourself away. And our life and all this"--he waved an inclusive hand at Madam Gadow's furniture--"is at an end."
He looked at her and repeated with bitter satisfaction, "At an end."
She glanced at his face, and his expression was remorseless. "I will not go on living with you," he said, lest there should be any mistake. "Our life is at an end."