The tragic solemnity of that low-toned relinquishment brought me up short. It was my turn to be bewildered by an opponent I could not understand.
"Sit down," she said, with a weary and almost imperious movement of the hand as she advanced into the room and again sank into the chair beside the writing-desk.
"Now what is it you want to know?" she asked, with only too obvious equivocation. Her trick to gain time exasperated me.
"Don't quibble and temporize that way," I cried. "Say what you've got to, and say it quick."
She directed at me a look which I resented, a look of scorn, of superiority, of resignation in the face of brutalities which I should never have subjected her to. Yet, when she spoke again her voice was so calm as to seem almost colorless.
"I said this was my home—and it's true. This was once my room. Several weeks ago I left it."
"Why?" I inquired, resenting the pause which was plainly giving her a chance to phrase ahead of her words.
"I quarreled with my husband. I went away. I was angry. I—I— There's no use explaining what it was about."
"You've got to explain what it was about," I insisted.
"You couldn't possibly understand. It's impossible to explain," she went quietly on. "I discharged a servant who was not honest. Then he tried to blackmail me. He lied about me. I had been foolish, indiscreet, anything you care to call it. But the lie he told was awful, unbelievable. That my husband should ask me to disprove it was more than I could endure. We quarreled, miserably, hopelessly. I went away. I felt it would be humiliating to stay under the same roof with him."