"Lettice, did it ever occur to you that a wife's unjust suspicions may help a man on to disloyalty? You no sooner took my name than you became a personified suspicion. You claimed dominion over my very thoughts. My every movement seemed to arouse your mistrust. You put spies upon me, when I had not even a thought of disloyalty. I discovered it, and, though I am ashamed now of the boyish folly, it's none the less true that I first broke my solemn vow to you out of revenge for your unjust suspicion. Then you helped me with your money and with your astonishing ability to twist and turn everything to our advantage and profit; and let me say that your audacious plans were not always quite scrupulous, Lettice! But when I found that that troubled you not a bit, I somehow felt that my disloyalty was not worth troubling about either. I was truly grateful for your help, but you wanted me on my knees, and you rubbed the service in so hard that it became unendurable, and I was in torment until I paid you the money back, with interest. But still you feel that I owe you a debt of gratitude, because, finding me an artist, full of dreams and willing to wait for their fulfilment, you have made of me a showman instead—a successful one at that. And now we have become such strangers that we place the ocean between us, for the comfort of its vast breadth dividing us. Lettice, we can't be less to each other than we are, and yet you reproach me with my infidelities. I can't understand why. I can't even understand why you married me. If you had ever loved me"—(he was busy with the pencils, he never saw the slowly rising blood creeping up even to the roots of her hair)—"but you never did, even at the first. I suppose you could not resist that craving you had to show what you could do with me, how you could push me. Lettice, don't you want to accept half of my earnings, and—and take your freedom—your legal freedom, I mean—without any blame being attached to you? Lettice, cast back my name, you can't care for it longer. See, I humble myself to entreat your favor in this matter! Accept your freedom—become once more Lettice Rowland!"
And, as the urgent voice ceased, Lettice asked, coldly: "Why?" and then had followed the silence.
And the man with the restless fingers saw all the time the dark, stricken face of the girl he loved, and seemed to hear the rapid, uneven footfalls of the young creature pursued by bitter memories through the heavy hours of the night, and the perspiration stood upon his forehead.
The pale eyes opposite that watched saw he suffered, and bitterness grew evenly with the wonder that filled her heart. She was a tenacious woman, one who would even hold fast a thing which she no longer valued, simply because it belonged to her. She was clever and shrewd, and she was making some astonishingly correct deductions from Thrall's looks and manner as well as his words. Hitherto his amours had been lightly formed and lightly broken, and she had been conscious at times of a sort of contemptuous pity for the women whose reign she knew would be so brief—but this was different. She had known last night—she told herself, she had seen, she had heard the new tenderness in his glance and tone. She saw in Sybil a new type of rival, a creature of intelligence as well as of beauty; and then and there had lighted even the dull anger that was burning in her now. She looked at his goodly length of limb, at his well-shaped, closely cropped head, at the black sweep of lashes she knew he hated. A sudden quiver came about her pale lips as she recalled how, in their early married days, she had often called his attention to something on the floor just for the pleasure of seeing their silky length sweep downward. He had never known, or he would probably have repeated the deed of his boyhood, when in a rage he had cut them off close to the lids and had been shut up under the doctor's care in consequence. And now he wanted her to give him up.
"Why?" She had not known that she had spoken the word until his start told her. Then he said, slowly:
"You would be happier, I think, Lettice" (he smiled faintly). "You would not be distressed, then, by my bad conduct, you know."
"Your consideration for my feelings is as touching as it is novel, but it is not a convincing reason for the putting away of a wife."
"A wife?" repeated Thrall, as he raised his eyes and looked steadily, meaningly, at her. "I think the precise and unemotional dictionary itself will describe wife as a 'woman united to a man by marriage.' Are we united, Lettice? It is nearly three years since our tenderly emotional public parting at the steamer, but our real parting dates much farther back."
She interrupted, to say, sharply: "Well, no one knows of that, and I'm sure my presence in London was of great service to you. At least two important plays would have escaped you, but for me and my clever planning."
"Yes," he answered, a little weariedly. "But I was not speaking of our relations as manager and agent—they are quite satisfactory; but I was about to state that while I am not an unmarried man—I am wifeless."