During her toilet her thoughts refused to leave the subject of last night’s quarrel. She and her husband had had disagreements before—many in the last year when they had virtually separated, though the world did not know it—but nothing so ignominiously repulsive as the scene of last evening had yet degraded their companionship. Bernice was ashamed. In the gray light of the dim, disillusioning morning she realized that she had gone too far. She knew Dominick to be long-suffering, she knew that the hold she had upon him was a powerful one, but the most patient creatures sometimes rebel, the most compelling sense of honor would sometimes break under too severe a strain. As she trailed down the long passage to the dining-room she made up her mind that she would make the first overture toward reconciliation that evening. It would be difficult but she would do it.
She was speculating as to how she would begin, in what manner she would greet him when he came home, when her eyes fell on the folded note against the clock. Apprehension clutched her as she opened it. The few lines within frightened her still more. He had gone—where? She turned the note over, looking at the back, in a sudden tremble of fearfulness. He had never done anything like this before, left her, suddenly cut loose from her in proud disgust. She stood by the clock, staring at the paper, her face fallen into scared blankness, the artificial hopefulness that she had been fostering since she awoke giving place to a down-drop into an abyss of alarm.
The door into the kitchen creaked and the Chinaman entered with the second part of the dainty breakfast cooked especially for her.
“What time did Mr. Ryan leave this morning?” she said without turning, throwing the question over her shoulder.
“I dunno,” the man returned, with the expressionless brevity of his race particularly accentuated in this case, as he did not like his mistress. “He no take blickfuss here. He no stay here last night.”
She faced round on him, her eyes full of a sudden fierce intentness which marked them in moments of angry surprise.
“Wasn’t here last night?” she demanded. “What do you mean?”
He arranged the dishes with careful precision, not troubling himself to look up, and speaking with the same dry indifference.
“He not here for blickfuss. No one sleep in his bed. I go make bed—all made. I think he not here all night.”
His work being accomplished he turned without more words and passed into the kitchen. Berny stood for a moment thinking, then, with a shrug of defiance, left her buckwheat cakes untasted and walked into the hall. She went directly to her husband’s room and looked about with sharp glances. She opened drawers and peered into the wardrobes. She was a woman who had a curiously keen memory for small domestic details, and a few moments’ investigation proved to her that he had taken some of his oldest clothes, but had left behind all the better ones, and that the silver box of jewelry on the bureau—filled with relics of the days when he had been the idolized son of his parents—lacked none of its contents.