He picked up a book, and bent it back and forth unconsciously.
"You are my husband!"
"That is false!" he said, sharply.
"In the eyes of the law," she went on, unheedingly, "if I choose to condone your offences, that is sufficient. Your light o' love is naught to me. I have been a faithful wife!" Thrall laughed aloud.
"Hereafter I shall live here at your side. I will not divorce you, and so give you to another. I shall remain Mrs. Stewart Thrall, while I live and while I die. I am a good woman, and therefore you cannot be divorced by any law on earth!"
Glancing down at the book, Thrall saw it was Milton's "Paradise Lost," and, flinging it on the table, he cried: "I wonder why Milton didn't make a virtuous woman the keeper of the gate of hell!"
As he left the room he added: "Lettice, against your hard, repellent virtue a generous sinner shines like an angel!" And he went forth to the bitterest hour of his life—his next meeting with Sybil Lawton.