"Who? Oh, they! I don't know. But I soon shall, as I'm going down to headquarters now. I think, perhaps, as the papers have taken me up, it may incline them to give me office. Not that they ever read the papers. But office is regarded as a muzzling order, as far as I can make out. They may think me worth muzzling. If so, I see no reason for not taking my muzzle off. I may not be back for lunch; I rather want to see Lady Ardingly."
"General bureau; central office," said she.
"Precisely. You have the habit of putting things well. Good-bye, Marie." He bent over the low chair where she was sitting and gently kissed her on the forehead. She looked up in genuine astonishment, then flushed slightly, for they had long been strangers to that sort of spontaneous caress, and it seemed to her to come from a stranger. He saw her astonishment and winced at it. "I—I beg your pardon!" he said hurriedly, knowing the moment he spoke that he was ill-inspired.
The bewildered moment of surprise passed, leaving Marie, however, with a glimpse of what might be even more bewildering. She laughed lightly enough, but with a certain nervousness.
"How original, for a husband to apologize to his wife for kissing her!" she said.
But she got up and did not offer to return the caress.
Marie required a few moments in which to steady herself after he had left her. She had been utterly taken by surprise. If Jack had emptied the contents of the waste-paper-basket over her, he would not have astonished her more. For days now she had had the impression that some change had come over Jack. At first she had put it all down to his regret for his telling her that her name was coupled with Jim Spencer's, but by degrees it had seemed to her that there must be something more. But this possibility she had only glanced at to reject. It could not be. Then he had kissed her.
Suddenly it seemed to her that the place where his lips had been burned her; she felt as if she had been insulted; a fine state of mind for a wife, she told herself angrily. Then, with a remorseless frankness, her conscience told her why she felt thus. It was because she had made herself a stranger to him; her heart was not here, it was with another. And Jack was her husband. Anyhow, she would face it honestly. She had despised and shown her scorn for him when he told her what people said, thinking she was honest in her indignation. But what if he had told her what nobody said, but what she knew, and what she was perfectly well aware Jim Spencer knew? Had she been so faithful, then, as to warrant her cold and burning words to Jack! She had scorned and then ignored the actual falsehood of his words, but what of that which was true, which he did not know—the real essential truth of that which lay behind the falsehood?