"I do! There is no other man in the world so much to me. I did not realise how much I cared till Captain Dalton made me, by his outrageous behaviour! I am not fit for Ray's love after knowing how I have lowered myself!"
"You will not mend matters by creating a misunderstanding between yourself and your husband. What is he to think if you continue to shrink from his caresses?"
"He will think I don't care at all, and that is so untrue!"
"Can't you see that, with your own hand, you are building up a barrier between you which will be difficult to pull down at will?"
"When I am able to tell him all about it, he will understand. At present I feel shamed and degraded. I feel myself a cheat! I, whom he believes a good and virtuous wife, have actually been kissed by a man who thought I was the sort to permit an intrigue! Don't you see, that if I behaved as though nothing wrong had happened, I would be putting myself on a par with Judas?"
Having wrought herself up to the point of hysteria, she was not to be reasoned with.
"How I wish I had never set foot in that dreadful place! It seems, after all, that the devil is really in possession of it, and that disaster overtakes people who enter there."
"Disaster invariably overtakes people who give the devil his chance," said Honor unable to resist a smile.
"I dare say you are right. I have been very foolish, for I had no idea of the sort of man I was growing so intimate with. But he was truly sorry, and tried afterwards in a hundred ways to show how he regretted his behaviour. Indeed, I think, on the whole, he received quite a good moral lesson for thinking most women are without any conscience," and Joyce proceeded to relate the sequel of her story, which involved that of the doctor's past.
"It is a most painful history," said Honor gravely.