Swamped as he was by hurt egotism, he did not fail to observe the peculiarity of her attitude.
"Very kind of you," he muttered, at a loss. "I—I am sorry for you, too. In fact, we're in rather a ridiculous position, you and I, aren't we?" His loud laugh was very shrill, and she held up her hand warningly.
"Hush."
Then he sat down and told her the story. How for months, ever since the late summer, in fact, he had noticed a change in his wife.
"She always had a lot of boys buzzing about and it never occurred to me to suspect Walbridge. I—why he's twenty years older than I am—or near it. I came up and down to town a good deal, and knew they used to see a good deal of each other, but, as I say, the fact of his age blinded me, damn him! Then, a week ago, that night here, I—I caught them looking at each other, and when I got back from seeing my mother—(it was Clara, by the way, who told my mother where we were going to be, and put her up to telephoning for me), I took the trouble to find out what time she had got home, and found that he had come back with her and stayed till three o'clock."
Mrs. Walbridge started. That was the morning when she had stood by her husband's bedside watching him as he lay asleep.
"So after that—my God, it's only a week ago!—I kept my eyes open, and to-day I found these."
He pulled a bundle of letters out of his breast pocket, and tossed them into her lap. The letters were tied with a piece of yellow ribbon, and taking hold of them by the ribbons, Mrs. Walbridge held them out to him.
"I don't want to see them," she said.
"You'd better—to convince you."