He lowered his hand and turned toward her as he spoke; and she looked up and faced him.
"Because I regarded the question as settled. I had decided it in my own mind months before, and had never regretted my decision. I should have thought it morbid...unnatural...to go over the whole subject again...to let it affect a situation that had come about...so much later...so unexpectedly."
"Did you never feel that, later, if I came to know—if others came to know—it might be difficult——?"
"No; for I didn't care for the others—and I believed that, whatever your own feelings were, you would know I had done what I thought right."
She spoke the words proudly, strongly, and for the first time the hard lines of his face relaxed, and a slight tremor crossed it.
"If you believed this, why have you been letting that cur blackmail you?"
"Because when he began I saw for the first time that what I had done might be turned against me by—by those who disliked our marriage. And I was afraid for my happiness. That was my weakness...it is what I am suffering for now."
"Suffering!" he echoed ironically, as though she had presumed to apply to herself a word of which he had the grim monopoly. He rose and took a few aimless steps; then he halted before her.
"That day—last month—when you asked me for money...was it...?"
"Yes——" she said, her head sinking.