Terence met the speaker's searching glance, which smouldered with admonition.
"I see," he smiled. "My own fault entirely."
He understood to whom the "certain friend" referred, as well as the warning against feminine influence in his chief's eye; and, for a moment of sick disappointment, he burned to confront the woman who had betrayed him with his knowledge of her perfidy, to fling this piece of unimagined baseness in her face, and so be rid of her.
But he realized ruefully within an hour that no such release was possible, at least for him. She had but done this thing to keep him near her.
She would plead that to stoop to such an act of treachery to the one who was dearest to her only proved how ungovernable was her love. There would be another horrible scene. She would threaten again to kill herself. And in the end he would succumb. Each sacrifice he had made for her only committed him to a fresh one. She had cultivated weakness in order to revel in his strength; he had pauperized her with his soul. Had she been a woman of rages, of pride, of resentments, it would have proved another matter; but how was it possible to hurt a thing that clung about one's neck.
So he said no more of his discomfiture, bitter as it was to his ambition as well as to his hopes of freedom. Her querulous exactions had already alienated his sympathies, so that it was no harder now to be kind to her than it had been before.
And he was glad to know definitely what he had to fear from her, even though the definition was so inclusive. He determined to loosen, slowly and gently, those tendrils of sentiment by which she clung to him, which were so enfeebling her self-support.
But he saw that he had little to hope for save from time and the natural infidelity of her sex.