The cliff, with choice between turning back and leaping over one of the precipices on either side—the precipice of flight to Basil in secrecy and dishonor, with Winchie, or the precipice of a divorce with Winchie taken away from her. She buried her face in her arms and burst into wild sobs. With Winchie taken away from her! If she fled, he would follow, would take Winchie. If she divorced him, he would take Winchie. It was hopeless—hopeless. There was no escape. Sobbing, she ran round and round her prison's outer court to which she had penetrated. It had no gates—none! He waited until she was quiet, except that her shoulders heaved occasionally. "Poor dear!" he said tenderly. "Poor child!" And he took her in his arms. She felt physically and morally too weak for the least struggle. She lay passive against his breast, her heartache throbbing dully. He carried her upstairs, laid her gently on the sofa at the foot of her bed. "Now you feel better, don't you?" said he, bending over her and smiling sympathetically down.
She gazed at him with forlorn, hopeless eyes, then rested her head weakly against the cushions in the corner of the sofa.
"Of course, I understood that what you were saying a while ago was only a nervous mood. But it gave me a shock, too. I know now what was the matter."
She grew cold, rigid. Did he suspect? Would he take Winchie?
"I admit I've been neglecting you lately. Gallatin's leaving put a lot of work on me. And, too, I read an article that gave me a silly scare—made me afraid I'd be anticipated in one of my discoveries if I didn't push things. But even if I was negligent, I can't see how you could get the notion in your head that you weren't loved any more." He sat down by her on the sofa, kissed the nape of her neck. "I'll make up for it," he murmured. "Why, it'd be as impossible for me to stop loving you as for you, a good woman, to stop loving your husband. The idea of you talking divorce!" He laughed boyishly. "You and I—divorced! What a naughty child it was! It seems dreadful that those pure lips could be sullied by such a word. But it never was in your heart. A woman like you, a woman I trust my honor to, and trust my boy to, couldn't think such things."
His words and manner, all tenderness, were for her reminders of the Vaughan prejudice and the Vaughan will and the Vaughan pride that lay behind; the clang of iron doors, the grate of brass keys in steel locks. She, back in her cell and prostrate on its floor, felt she must indeed have been driven out of her senses by heart hunger to imagine she could get freedom and Winchie from Richard Vaughan. How love and hope had tricked her!
"Asleep, dear?"
"No."
"You don't doubt my love any longer, do you?"
She moved restlessly.