Hugh dropped the cigar he had been picking to pieces, crossed over and stood facing her, his arms folded across his chest.
“Marjorie, you know just as well as I do,” he went directly to the point, “that you and I haven’t been congenial for a very long time.”
“I tried to remedy it, though, Hugh,” she answered quickly, “only a short time ago, but you refused to meet me even half way.”
Her husband’s brows contracted in annoyance.
“I told you at that time that it was entirely too late,” was his impatient comment. “Your years of indifference have killed something inside of me that nothing can ever bring to life again.”
“I—I don’t understand,” she ventured feebly, and the sobs she had sought to hold back shook her slender frame. The sight but annoyed the man the more.
“Please refrain from creating a scene,” he admonished coldly. “It will not in the least facilitate matters.”
Hopeless as she felt it in her innermost being to be, Marjorie Benton felt that she must struggle with all her might through one other battle in an effort to keep her husband—he who was all in the world to her, though he so little realized it.
She looked up at him, her hands clasped tightly for self-control (Hugh always did so dislike tears, she remembered), her eyes pleading.
“Surely, Hugh dear,” she begged, “you cannot mean what you are saying! You cannot mean that your love for me is so wholly dead—why, think of all the years—” Hugh turned his face indifferently away—“no small thing like different tastes and beliefs could make them count for nothing, I know—Oh, Hugh!” and a wail crept into the pleading voice, “can it be—was I right after all? Is it—is it—that—woman?”