Dulac laughed shortly. "That settled HIM," he said. "Now you'll come."
She stood regarding him as she might have regarded some strangely endowed person she had never seen before. Then with a sudden, passionate vehemence she burst out upon him:
"Never…. Never…. I'll never go with you. I'm his wife—his wife…. Oh, what have you done?… I hate you—I hate you! Don't ever dare—come near me again…. I hate you…."
She turned and fled to her room and locked the door. Though he knocked and called, though he pleaded and threatened, she made no reply, but sat dry-eyed, on her bed, until she heard him go away raging….
CHAPTER XXV
Hilda Lightener's electric stopped before the apartment house where Bonbright Foote lived, and Hilda alighted. She ignored bell and speaking tube and ran upstairs to Bonbright's door, on which she knocked as a warning. Then she opened the door and called: "It's me. Anybody home?"
Nobody replied. She called again, and walked into the little living room where Ruth and Bonbright and Dulac had faced one another an hour before…. She called again. This time she heard a sound, muffled, indistinct, but recognizable as a sob.
"Ruth!" she called, and went to the bedroom door. Now she could hear
Ruth within, sobbing alarmingly.
"Ruth Foote," said Hilda, "what's the matter?… Where's Bonbright?…
I'm coming in."
She opened the door, saw Ruth outstretched on the bed, face buried in her pillow, sobbing with a queer, startling dryness. It was not the sob of a woman in an attack of nerves, not the sob of a woman merely crying to rest herself, nor the sob of a bride who has had a petty quarrel with her husband. It was different, alarmingly different. There was despair in it. It told of something seriously awry, of stark tragedy.