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means so vastly better, still she was young and amenable and adaptable, and could still be
improved. Opportunity as he now chose to think, might make Aileen, whereas for Lillian-- or at
least, as he now saw it--it could do nothing.
"I'll tell you how it is, Lillian," he said; "I'm not sure that you are going to get what I mean exactly,
but you and I are not at all well suited to each other any more."
"You didn't seem to think that three or four years ago," interrupted his wife, bitterly.
"I married you when I was twenty-one," went on Cowperwood, quite brutally, not paying any
attention to her interruption, "and I was really too young to know what I was doing. I was a mere
boy. It doesn't make so much difference about that. I am not using that as an excuse. The point
that I am trying to make is this-- that right or wrong, important or not important, I have changed
my mind since. I don't love you any more, and I don't feel that I want to keep up a relationship,
however it may look to the public, that is not satisfactory to me. You have one point of view
about life, and I have another. You think your point of view is the right one, and there are
thousands of people who will agree with you; but I don't think so. We have never quarreled
about these things, because I didn't think it was important to quarrel about them. I don't see
under the circumstances that I am doing you any great injustice when I ask you to let me go. I
don't intend to desert you or the children--you will get a good living-income from me as long as I
have the money to give it to you--but I want my personal freedom when I come out of here, if
ever I do, and I want you to let me have it. The money that you had and a great deal more, once
I am out of here, you will get back when I am on my feet again. But not if you oppose me--only if
you help me. I want, and intend to help you always--but in my way."
He smoothed the leg of his prison trousers in a thoughtful way, and plucked at the sleeve of his
coat. Just now he looked very much like a highly intelligent workman as he sat here, rather than
like the important personage that he was. Mrs. Cowperwood was very resentful.
"That's a nice way to talk to me, and a nice way to treat me!" she exclaimed dramatically, rising
and walking the short space-- some two steps--that lay between the wall and the bed. "I might
have known that you were too young to know your own mind when you married me. Money, of
course, that's all you think of and your own gratification. I don't believe you have any sense of
justice in you. I don't believe you ever had. You only think of yourself, Frank. I never saw such a
man as you. You have treated me like a dog all through this affair; and all the while you have
been running with that little snip of an Irish thing, and telling her all about your affairs, I suppose.
You let me go on believing that you cared for me up to the last moment, and then you suddenly
step up and tell me that you want a divorce. I'll not do it. I'll not give you a divorce, and you
needn't think it."
Cowperwood listened in silence. His position, in so far as this marital tangle was concerned, as
he saw, was very advantageous. He was a convict, constrained by the exigencies of his position
to be out of personal contact with his wife for a long period of time to come, which should
naturally tend to school her to do without him. When he came out, it would be very easy for her
to get a divorce from a convict, particularly if she could allege misconduct with another woman,
which he would not deny. At the same time, he hoped to keep Aileen's name out of it. Mrs.
Cowperwood, if she would, could give any false name if he made no contest. Besides, she was
not a very strong person, intellectually speaking. He could bend her to his will. There was no
need of saying much more now; the ice had been broken, the situation had been put before her,
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