Jack's eyes fell nervously before the questioning in hers.
"Tell me, don't you believe we could be very happy together?"
"Why should you doubt me?" he said evasively.
"I don't doubt you, but I want the joy of hearing you say so. To me it is so wonderful,—what is about to happen,—that I am afraid I shall wake up and find it is all a dream!" she said fatuously, gazing with adoration at Jack's fine physique and boyish, handsome face. "You have often feared possibilities, and said you would stand by me if anything went wrong between Barry and myself."
Jack remembered having often said much that had made him hotly uncomfortable to recall afterwards.
"Didn't you, Jack, dear?"
"Of course," he said desperately. "What else do you suppose, unless I am a howling cad?"
"I know you are not, that is why I simply adore you. You are so true, so sincere! My beau ideal of manhood!—--"
"Well, it is like this. Barry has come to the conclusion that it isn't fair to either of us to keep dragging at our chains when we have long ceased to care for each other, so he wrote, yesterday, to tell me that he would put no obstacle in my way if I wished to divorce him. There is someone he is keen on and whom he will marry in due course. I can do the same. He has heard about you—just rumour—but as a woman is always the one to suffer most in a suit for divorce he has most generously suggested that the initiative should come from me. Rather decent of him, what?"
"Tremendously decent," said Jack his heart becoming like lead in his breast. For a moment the lights of the theatre swam; he felt deadly sick and cold, and failed to take in the sense of what she continued to say. In the midst of his mental upheaval the lights mercifully went down and the curtain up, so that much of his emotion passed unnoticed.