She nearly laughed, he was so ridiculous, but her deep eyes filled with tears over the pathos of it.
"Listen, Ferdie," she said gently, "you need not worry about me. I am an old woman now and I have always been a good woman. I bought this dress, and several others, in Paris, with money that I got as a prize for a book."
He stared at her stupidly with his blood-shot eyes.
"Yes, a book you have probably read. It's called 'Bess Knighthood.'"
"You—you didn't write 'Bess Knighthood!'"
"Yes, I did. After 'Lord Effingham' was such a failure, I just—just sat down and wrote 'Bess Knighthood.' I don't know how I did it—it went so fast I could hardly remember it, when it was done." A wan smile stirred her lips, which seemed to have lost their recent fullness and looked flat and faded, "but I got the prize."
"Oh." He looked annoyed, and she realised at once that he felt injured, for it had always given him a pleasant feeling of superiority to laugh at her looks, and now he could laugh no more.
"Yes," she resumed, drawing herself up a little in her pride, "and I have not spent very much—I have got nearly five hundred pounds left, so if you need some, Ferdie——"
The early day was by now coming in over the geraniums, and in its wan light, each of them thought how ruinous the other looked.
Walbridge gazed at his wife. "You are fagged out," he said pompously. "It is very late, I think we had better go upstairs," and without a word she followed him up into the hall.