Honor looked at him, then turned her back and knelt down by the fire. Presently she spoke.
"Your thoughts have been ugly company I'm afraid. This is a terrible surprise, Myles, for I know so well how much you must have suffered before you could say such things to me. Will you never understand your own wife?"
"I think I do—at last."
"You'll be sorry—very sorry that you could speak so, and let an unhappy accident be the spark to this. If you had but heard what Christopher said of you this very day driving home——"
"Don't begin that folly. That he slights me enough to praise me—and you listen to him and pretend to think he is in earnest!"
She did not answer; then he sat up in bed and spoke again.
"I'm glad that weakness has torn this out of me. I shall be sorry to-morrow, but I'm glad to-night. Leave the fire and come here. I don't want to shout. You see what you've dragged me down to; you see what a snarling cur with his bone stolen I look now. That's your work. And I'll thank you to put a period to it. I don't live any longer in this purgatory, however greatly your fool's paradise may please you. I'm weary of it. It's poisoning me. Either you see too much of this man or not enough. That is what you have to determine. If too much, end it; if not enough, mend it, and go to him, body and soul, for good—the sooner the better."
"Myles! You, of all men, to be so coarse! Are you mad? Are you dreaming to speak to your wife so? God knows that I've never done, or said, or thought anything to anger you to this, or shadow your honour for a second—nor has he."
"'He!' Always 'he—he—he'—rooting at your heart-strings, I suppose, like a ——. What do you know of his thoughts and dreams? How comes it that you are so read in his life and mind that you can say whether my honour is so safe with him? I'd sooner trust it with my dogs. Then it would be safe. Who are you to know what this man's mind holds?"
"I ought to know, if anybody does."