His eyes lighted; he smiled triumphantly. "I told you!" he cried. "You see, you still feel that we're married, that our interests are the same."
She colored, but he could not be sure whether her irritation was against herself or against him. "You are very confident of yourself—and of me," said she ironically, and her eyes were laughing at him. "And this is the man," she mocked, "who less than three brief years ago was so eager to be rid of me!"
"Yes," he admitted, with a brave and not unsuccessful effort at brazening out what could not be denied or explained away. "But you were not the same person then that you are now."
"And whose fault was that?" retorted she. "You married me when I was a mere child. You could have made of me what you pleased. Instead, you——"
"I admit it all," he interrupted. "I married you—from a base motive, though I can plead that I glamoured it over to myself. Still, I owed it to myself and to you to have done my level best with and for you. And I shirked and skulked."
She did not show the appreciation of this abjectness which he had, perhaps unconsciously, expected. Instead, she laughed satirically, but with entire good humor. "How clever you think yourself, Horace," said she, "and how stupid you think me. That's a very old trick, to try to make a crime into a virtue by confessing it."
He hung his head, convicted. "At least," he said humbly, "I love you now. If you will give me another chance——"
"You had as good a chance as a man could ask," she reminded him, without the anger that would have made him feel sure of her. "How you used to exasperate me! You assumed I had neither intelligence nor feeling. You were so selfish, so self-centered. I don't see how you can hope to be trusted, even as a friend. You shake me off; you see me again; find I have been somewhat improved by a stay in New York; find I am not wholly unattractive to others. Your jealousy is roused. No, please don't protest. You see, I understand you perfectly."
"I deserve it," he said.
"Do you think a woman would be showing even the small good sense you concede women, if she were to trust a man whose interest in her was based upon jealousy of another man?"