“I hear nothing now of their engagement,” she said, thoughtfully.
He turned to her quickly.
“It was you who told me about it—surely you remember?”
“Oh, yes, perfectly; but I fancy it must be broken off, as I hear nothing of it.”
He only said bitterly to himself that she had played with another heart and broken it; but for the remainder of all that day no smile or cheerful word came from him.
Yet she did not notice it. She knew the power of her own beauty, and she would have deemed it simply impossible that the man upon whom she lavished all her love could give one thought to another.
She was blind and deaf to the fierce contest going on in the heart and soul of her husband—to the war that never ended, between right and wrong.
He would go to her at times with a wearied look on his face that never came from physical fatigue. He would lay his head down like a tired child, and say:
“Clarice, sing to me.”
She never said to herself that she was needed to drive away the demon of discontent; she only thought he preferred her singing to any other, and was flattered accordingly.