"Ever since then, Katherine has been working on the substitute for honor and conscience which the Draper carries around with her—but she was hard as nails for a long time. She is terribly grateful to Katherine, however, as fond of her as she can be of anyone, and she has finally consented to come here. Don't anger her if you can help it."
When, a little later, Grace Draper and I faced each other, it was pity instead of anger that stirred my heart. The girl was inexpressibly wan, her beauty only a worn shadow of its former glory. But there was the old flash of defiant hatred in her eyes as she looked at me.
"Please don't flatter yourself that I have come here for your sake," she said, with her old smooth insolence. "But this girl here"—she indicated Katherine—"took care of me before she knew who I was. She just about saved my life and reason, too, when there was nobody else to care a whit whether I lived or died. Even my sister's gone back on me. So when I saw how much it meant to her to find out the truth about your precious husband, I promised her I'd come and tell you the little I knew."
She drew a long breath, and went on.
"In the first place, I didn't go to San Francisco with Dicky Graham, although I'm glad if my little trick made you think so for awhile. I didn't go anywhere with him except into a café for a few minutes, the day he left New York. It was just after he got back from Marvin, and he was pouring drinks into himself so fast that he was pretty hazy about what had happened, but I made a pretty shrewd guess as to his trouble."
She turned to me, and I saw with amazement that contempt for me was written on her face.
"You!" she snarled, "with your innocent face, and your high and mighty airs, you must have been up to something pretty disgraceful, to have your husband feel the way he did that day he started for San Francisco! He had to go out to Marvin unexpectedly that morning, almost as soon as he had arrived in the city. What or who he found there, you know best."
"Stop!" said Lillian authoritatively, and for a long minute the two women faced each other, Grace Draper defiant, Lillian, with all the compelling, almost hypnotic power that is hers when she chooses to exercise it.
The accusation which the girl had hurled at me stunned me as effectually as an actual missile from her hand would have done. What did she mean? And then, before my dazed brain could work itself back through the mazes of memory, there came the whir of a taxi in the street, an imperative ring of the bell, a tramp of masculine footsteps in the hall, and then—my husband's arms were around me, his lips murmuring disjointed, incoherent sentences against my cheek.
"Madge! Madge! little sweetheart!—no right to ask forgiveness—deserve to lose you forever for my doubt of you—been through a thousand hells since I left—"