She drew back from him with a startled movement. For an instant her eyes challenged his. Then abruptly their fierce resistance failed. She turned her face aside and burst into tears.
In a moment she was free. Her husband stood regarding her with a very curious look in his eyes. He watched her as she moved slowly away from him, fighting fiercely, desperately, to regain her self-control. He saw her sit down, leaving almost the length of the room between them, and lean her head upon her hand.
Then the man's arrested brutality suddenly reasserted itself, and he strode to the door.
"Pshaw!" he exclaimed as he went. "Don't I know that you pray for a deliverer every night of your life? And what deliverer would you have if not death—the surest of all—in your case positively the only one within the bounds of possibility?"
He was gone with the words, but she would not have attempted to answer them had he stayed. Her head was bowed almost to her knees, and she sat quite motionless, as if he had stabbed her to the heart.
Later she dined alone with Archie in her husband's unexplained absence, and later still, at the theatre, her face was as gay, her laugh as frequent, as any there.