Free The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

before heard him say to her any but sweet, flattering and delightful things. She had been accustomed to find him subservient to all her whims.
    ‘If you want the truth you can have it. He’s only too anxious to marry me. Dorothy Townsend is perfectly willing to divorce him and we shall be married the moment we’re free.’
    ‘Did he tell you that in so many words or is that the impression you have gained from his manner?’
    Walter’s eyes shone with bitter mockery. They made Kitty a trifle uneasy. She was not quite sure that Charlie had ever said exactly that in so many words.
    ‘He said it over and over again.’
    ‘That’s a lie and you know it’s a lie.’
    ‘He loves me with all his heart and soul. He loves me as passionately as I love him. You’ve found out. I’m not going to deny anything. Why should I? We’ve been lovers for a year and I’m proud of it. He means everything in the world to me and I’m glad that you know at last. We’re sick to death of secrecy and compromise and all the rest of it. It was a mistake that I ever married you, I never should have done it, I was a fool. I never cared for you. We never had anything in common. I don’t like the people you like and I’m bored by the things that interest you. I’m thankful it’s finished.’
    He watched her without a gesture and without a movement of his face. He listened attentively and no change in his expression showed that what she said affected him.
    ‘Do you know why I married you?’
    ‘Because you wanted to be married before your sister Doris.’
    It was true, but it gave her a funny little turn to realise that he knew it. Oddly enough, even in that moment of fear and anger, it excited her compassion. He faintly smiled.
    ‘I had no illusions about you,’ he said. ‘I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and common-place. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It’s comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn’t ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you’d only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn’t care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they’re in love with some one and the love isn’t returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn’t like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn’t see any reason that you should, I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humoured affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn’t afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favour.’
    Kitty, accustomed to flattery all her life, had never heard such things said to her before. Blind wrath, driving out fear, arose in her heart: it seemed to choke her, and she felt the blood-vessels in her temples swell and throb. Wounded vanity can make a woman more vindictive than a lioness robbed of her cubs. Kitty’s jaw, always a little too square, protruded with an apish hideousness and her beautiful eyes were black with malice. But she kept her temper in check.
    ‘If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.’
    ‘Evidently.’
    His derisive tone increased her irritation. She felt that she could wound him more by maintaining her calm.
    ‘I’m not very well-educated and I’m not very clever. I’m just a perfectly ordinary young woman. I like the things that the people like