"I loathe him!"
"Yet you are married?"
She spread out her hands in a gesture that was no answer to his incredulity. Quick as thought he caught her left.
"Where's the ring?"
"Yours is quite safe."
"But the wedding-ring—your wedding-ring?"
"I took it off the moment we met. It dropped in the porch. I couldn't let you find out that way."
Her hand also dropped out of his. He turned heavily away from her. It was as though for a moment he had cherished some mad hope; now he stood broken and aloof, shaken with sobs that never reached his throat; oblivious alike to the rustle of the silk dress behind him, to the fluttering featherweight of her hand upon his arm.
"Oh, Denis, Denis, if I could die ... if I could die! It is worse for me. You are not married; you are not tied for life. But I deserve it all, all, all.... There's no excuse for me, none. Yet there is some explanation—poor enough, God knows! Won't you listen to that? Won't you listen to me at all?"
He turned slowly round, and looked upon Nan with the unseeing fixity of the blind. "Go on," he said. "I am listening, and will listen."