“A beautiful sentiment, as Clarke Shayle would say,” she commented. “It is fortunate that I didn’t marry you for any supposed amiability. As for yourself?”
“As for myself——” He flung off the hand that still clung, a note of passion in his voice. “Has your memory utterly failed you, Catherine? Can’t you or won’t you remember what I used to be? Once I tried to make you understand something of what I hoped from life and love. Do you suppose that it has been comfortable for me to appear a stone man? You don’t want me. Let me find a life—perhaps even love—for myself. Oh, Catherine, you used at least to seem kind in the early days! Try to be a little kind again.”
“Just kind enough to free you. And she?”
Certainly there was no promise in the bite of her response or the curiosity with which she eyed the emotion on his face.
In reply to her question, John Cabot simply looked at her—a warning look, known and feared on the Street.
“This lady with whom you hope to find life and love—did she suggest the plan to lay me on the shelf?” Catherine inquired. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, they say. Of course I can’t blame her for wishing to take advantage of poor Jack’s death by——”
“That will do, Catherine.” He voiced the warning look. “There is no other woman in my life.”
As if relieved of an unhappy suspicion, she lifted a smile of the self-believing sort which ten years before would have blinded him to the lies behind her lips.
“Then why,” she asked, “suggest the Union Pacific—the road to Reno? How can you, a mere husband, feel sure that you know your wife’s heart? I defy the laws of Nevada or any other state to give you the key. What if I should say that I still do want you?”
“You cannot say that and speak the truth.”