“No, it is nothing like that,” the Marquis replied sharply. “It is just that we can go on no longer as we are.”
He walked to the porthole as he spoke and she thought that he could not bear to look at her. She wanted to cry aloud with the agony she felt within her.
But what was the use? This was the end. This was what she had feared. What she always had known must eventually happen.
He wanted to be free. Even the slight bond that held him to her he found confining and he desired his liberty again.
“Have – you such a – distaste of me?” she whispered.
“Distaste,” the Marquis echoed the word, but did not turn round. “You don’t understand, Perdita. I can no longer behave in a way that fulfils your trust in me. You have told me so often that you do not look on me as a man but rather as a pr
