Dumbly, realizing a little of the pain behind those gray unshifting pupils, Aliette listened. Speak she could not. What did the divorce matter? The divorce would come too late. Too late!
The man who had found his own soul went on: "What I wanted to tell you was that everything will be done quietly. As quietly as possible. If there's any publicity, you sha'n't suffer from it. I give you my word about that."
She managed to say: "You're being very kind to me, Hector. Too kind."
"It's you who are kind"--the voice of the "hanging prosecutor" was the voice of a schoolboy--"and I don't deserve kindness of you. I've behaved like a cad right through the piece. But you'll shake hands with me, won't you? You'll part friends? You'll say that you forgive?"
Automatically Aliette rose. "There's nothing to forgive," she said dully. "Nothing."
Automatically she took off her glove, and offered him her right hand.
Holding his wife's fingers for one last fugitive second, Hector Brunton was conscious that a shiver--the tiniest faintest shiver as of revulsion--ran through her body. And Hector Brunton thought: "This is my punishment, my supreme punishment. God, if there is a such a person, can do no more to me."
Then, releasing her hand, he said to himself: "But I can't let her go. I can't let her go out of my life like this. She's miserable, miserable."
His father's recent words flashed through his mind. Suppose--suppose Aliette were to die, as Lucy Towers had so nearly died? Suppose that Aliette, crazed and with child, were to kill herself. And he thought: "I've got to say something, something that will give her hope."
He asked, gently, looking into her eyes for the last time: "I'll do my best to get things through as quickly as possible, You'd like that, wouldn't you?"