"Facts."
"You mean she doesn't know?"
"Know! Know you for what you are and for what you made of me? I've kept it something decent for her. Just the separation of husband and wife—who couldn't agree. Incompatibility. I have not told her—" And suddenly could have rammed her teeth into the tongue that had betrayed her. Simultaneously with the leap of light into his eyes came the leap of her error into her consciousness.
"Oh," he said, and smiled, a slow smile that widened as leisurely as sorghum in the pouring.
"You made me tell you that! You came here for that. To find out!"
"Nothin' the sort, Hattie. You only verified what I kinda suspected.
Naturally, you've kept it from her. Admire you for it."
"But I lied! See! I know your tricks. She does know you for what you are and what you made of me. She knows everything. Now what are you going to do? She knows! I lied! I—" then stopped, at the curve his lips were taking and at consciousness of the pitiableness of her device.
"Morton," she said, her hands opening into her lap into pads of great pink helplessness, "you wouldn't tell her—on me! You're not that low!"
"Wouldn't tell what?"
He was rattling her, and so she fought him with her gaze, trying to fasten and fathom under the flicker of his lids. But there were no eyes there. Only the neutral, tricky tan.