Part Three - Mr. Welles Lights the Fuse

She became conscious that her words were having a singular effect upon
Vincent. A dark flush had come over all his face. His gaze on her was
extraordinary in its intentness, in its eagerness, in its fierceness.
She stopped suddenly, as though he had broken in on what she was saying.

He did not stir from his place, but to her he seemed to tower taller.
Into his dark, intent face came an exultant look of power and authority
which fell on her like a hot wind. With a loud knocking of her heart she
knew. Before he spoke, she knew what he would say. And he saw that.

He opened those burning lips and said in the same low voice, rough with
its intensity, "You see what you have done. You have spoken for me. You
have said at last what I have been silently and desperately calling out
to you. You know what has happened. You have said it, it is obvious to
anyone with any sense of human values. Make an end! Make an end! Come
away from a position where only an outworn old ideal holds you to
futility and waste. Come away where you will really live and know the
fullness of life. Come away from that false notion of duty which makes
you do for the children what you know is not best for them, only because
it is the traditional thing to do, only because it gives you a martyr's
crown to wear. I don't say anything now, as I would to any other woman
in the world, as I would have said to you weeks ago before I knew all
that you are . . . I don't say anything about the imbecility of keeping
such a woman as you are here in this narrow, drab hole, this sordid
prison . . . you born, if ever a human being was, to rich and warm and
harmonious living! It is your birthright. Let me give it to you. All
that, even that, a whole world of beauty and fullness waiting for you to
create it to glorious being, all that is nothing compared to what has
come to pass between us, you and me; compared to that other world of
impassioned living existence that is waiting for you. Come away from the
man who is nothing more to you than the house you live in . . . nothing
but a habit."