"That is the madness of it. With my wife."
"Will!"
"It is the truth," he went on, half whimsically, but with a certain ring of earnestness in his tone. "I acknowledge the madness, the poor taste of a man's falling in love with his own wife, but the fact stubbornly remains. I have been in love with you for a long time, but I stood back for Arthur like a good fellow."
"I never was in love with Arthur," she interrupted.
"It is no matter," he continued. "The question is, can't you get up a grain of grace for me, old lady?"
He leaned over the table, his dark eyes shining as she had never seen them before. She was fascinated by his gaze; she felt as if the ground were slipping from beneath her feet, and as though he were casting upon her an evil spell. A wave of despair swept over her. Must she again submit to his power; were the old days of bitter bondage to return; was she nothing but a puppet to his will?
In this extremity a memory saved her. Unable to withdraw her gaze from her husband's face, there came to her suddenly the look in the eyes of Grant Herman that day when he told her his love. The blood surged to her cheeks, but her calmness returned.
"It is of no use, Will," she said with gentle firmness. "All that is past forever between us. We had better not speak of it," she added wistfully. "I have so few friends that I cannot bear to lose any one of them."
"My folly is then my misfortune," he responded, with no appearance of diminished good humor. "It is the pleasure of the gods to torment me; I suppose it amuses them. The old Romans were only aping them in their blood-thirsty sports, and I fancy that is the secret of their deification, for nothing seems so much to the liking of the gods as to torment humanity."
The evident endeavor which the speaker made to appear flippant and at his ease showed her how deeply he was moved. His wife felt this without fully reasoning it out, and the consciousness that this self-controlled man was so stirred awoke in her a strange and powerful excitement. She turned a shade paler, as she looked silently down into her wine-glass. Her own life had been too sad for her not to feel some emotion at his words. She strove to repress the thoughts which made her bosom swell and heave, yet it was from them her words came when she broke the silence.