She spoke as one who suddenly sees straight into a secret. “I didn’t,” said I hastily. “It never entered my head to think you cared a rap about me.”
“Now, don’t tease me, Godfrey, dear. You must have been making all sorts of plans to win me back.”
“You read the item in the paper?” suggested I.
“Oh, yes—I must finish. I read it. And at first I shrugged my shoulders and said to myself I didn’t in the least care. But I couldn’t get the thing out of mind. Godfrey, I had always been too sure of you. You never seemed to be a single tiny bit interested in other women. So the thought of you and another woman had not once come to me. That item put it there. You—my husband—my Godfrey and another woman! It was like touching a match to powder. I went mad. I——”
She was sitting up, her eyes wild, her voice trembling. “You must not excite yourself, Edna,” I said.
“I went mad,” she repeated, so interested in her emotions that she probably did not hear me. “I rushed down to Margot. I fell ill. I made her telegraph for you. Oh, how I suffered until I knew you were here. If you hadn’t come right away I’d have cabled to my lawyer in New York to have the divorce set aside—or whatever they do. I can have it set aside any time up to the end of the six months, can’t I?”
“Yes,” admitted I, though her tone of positive knowledge made my reply superfluous.
She seemed instinctively to feel a suspicion—an explanation of her amazing about-face—that was slowly gathering in my bewildered mind. She drew from the folds of her negligee a note and handed it to me. She said:
“I haven’t confessed the worst I had done. Read that.”
“Never mind,” said I. “I don’t wish to know.”