“James, we must both be careful. We must not quarrel.” Her hands grasped the lapels of his long lounging robe. There was an appealing look in her eyes that checked the harsh words even as they rose to his lips. He found himself looking into those dark eyes with the same curious wonder in his own that had become so common of late. Time and again he had been puzzled by something he saw in their liquid depths, something that he could not fathom, no matter how deeply he probed.
“What is there about you, Yvonne, that hurts me—yes actually hurts me—when you look at me as you're looking now?” he cried almost roughly.
“We have been married a scant four months,” she said gently. “Would you expect a woman to shed her mystery in so short a time as that?”
“There is something in your eyes———” he began, and shook his head in utter perplexity. “You startle me once in a while. There are times when you seem to be looking at me through eyes that are not your own. It's—it's—quite uncanny. If you———”
“I assure you my eyes are all my own,” she cried flippantly, and yet there was a slight trace of nervousness in her manner. “Do you intend to be nice and good and reasonable, James? I mean about poor Frederic.”
His face clouded again.
“Do you know what you are doing to that boy?” he asked bluntly.
“Quite as well as I know what you are doing to him,” she replied quickly.
He stiffened. “Can't you see what it is coming to?”
“Yes. He was on the point of leaving your house, never to come back to it again. That's what it is coming to,” she said.