“Lilah—it’s unspeakable of me to worry you with this—but I can’t get it out of my mind somehow. Will you tell me—will you tell me if they ever found out who sent that anonymous letter to your husband?”
She had stared back at him with strange eyes set in a face from which every trace of emotion had suddenly been frozen.
“The letter? No.” The small remote voice was utterly forbidding. “You are quite right; it is cruel to remind of those times. What difference can it possibly make to you?”
He had fought desperately to find some words that would show her what need his sick soul had of assurance, but he had found none. He could only stare at her dumbly, his wretched eyes assuring that it made, somehow, a huge difference.
“But why?”
And he had cried hopelessly, “Oh, I may be mad—I think I am—but I can’t get it out of my head. I keep wondering whether you—if you sent——”
“I?” She had cried out as sharply as though he had struck her, and then sat very still, fighting her way back to composure, inch by inch. When she spoke again her voice was very low, incredibly controlled.
“You are implying something that is too monstrous for sanity. May I ask what motive—what possible motive, however abominable—you think that I could have had for wrecking my husband’s career?”
He had whispered, “Oh, God forgive me, what motive had Antony’s Egypt? What motive have any of you for flaunting your power over us? You crack the whip, and we go crashing through the hoop of our dreams, smashing it—smashing it for ever.”
She had risen then, sweeping him from brow to heel with her unrelenting eyes.