“If she had asked for one, would you have granted it to her?”
“I would have granted her anything that she asked for.”
“But you would have been surprised?”
Stephen Bellamy smiled with white lips. “ ‘Surprised’ is rather an inadequate word.” He sought for one more adequate—failed—and dismissed it with an eloquent motion of his hands. “I should have been more—well, astounded than it is possible for me to say.”
“So you had no inkling that your wife was contemplating any such action?”
“Not the faintest, not the——” Once more he pulled himself up, and after a moment’s pause, he leaned forward. “That, too, sounds ridiculously inadequate. I should like to make myself quite clear; apparently I haven’t succeeded in doing so. I believed my wife to be completely happy. You see, I believed that she loved me.”
He was pale enough now to gratify the most exigent reporter of emotions, but his pleasant, leisurely voice did not falter, and it was the ruddy Lambert, not he, who seemed embarrassed.
“Yes, quite so—naturally. I wished simply to establish the fact that you were not in her confidence as to her—er—attitude toward Mr. Ives. Now, Mr. Bellamy, I am going to ask you to tell us as directly and concisely as possible just what happened from the time that you and Mrs. Bellamy finished dinner that evening up to the time that you retired for the night.”
“I did not retire for the night.”
“I beg your pardon?”