“I could have forgiven you—anything,” he said slowly, “but the child—” his voice broke despite him and a look of bitter pain convulsed his face—“the child you left to die alone—and you knew he was dying—”
“It’s a lie,” she cried shrilly. “I didn’t know.”
He raised his hand with a gesture that silenced her.
“It is the truth,” he said with accusing sternness. “Do you think there was nobody to tell me? The doctor, the nurses, everybody but you, his mother, knew that he couldn’t live. And you left him. My God, you left him!”
She flung him a glance of furious anger, “You always cared for him more than me,” she sneered, and for a moment she braved him audaciously with heaving bosom and quivering lips. Then she flinched under his steady eyes and shrinking from him flung herself face downwards on a sofa and broke into a storm of tears. Tears of rage and mortification. With a feeling of suffocation he turned away, not troubling to refute the taunt she knew as well as he to be untrue. The room that was redolent with memories of the noble woman who had lived in it seemed suddenly fouled and contaminated. And heartsick and shaken by the scene he had gone through he crossed to a window and flinging back the jalousies, leant against the framework, staring unseeingly out into the night, struggling to regain the self-control that had almost left him. He was all at sea, striving to solve the problem of the woman who lay sobbing on the sofa behind him. That the life she had chosen had ended in disaster was beyond all question. What she had become was too obvious to be mistaken. It was written plainly on her face for all to see. But what had brought her to such a pass, what had induced the moral débâcle that was so apparent? What desperate strait had driven her to the course she had adopted tonight? It was not for love of him she had taken such a step nor did she want his love. What then did she want that she had come to him like any common courtesan seeking by purely physical enticement to regain the old ascendancy she had had over him? There seemed only one possible solution. And yet, remembering the liberal settlement he had made on her, he wondered how even that was possible. With a deep sigh he pulled himself together and went slowly back to her.
“Why did you come to me tonight, Elinor?”
She was still lying prone among the silken cushions, but at the sound of his voice she sat up, shivering as though the room were cold, her hands clutching at the soft pillows of the sofa.
“I told you,” she said sullenly.
He made a gesture of impatience.
“Oh, for God’s sake don’t tell me any lies,” he said wearily. “You never cared for me, you don’t care for me now. Tell me the truth. For only the truth will help either of us tonight. Why did you come?”