But it was not in her nature to lie. I think she probably said: "I don't know. I'm afraid not." And then I think her sad face must have begun to pucker like that of a little child going to cry, and I think it is very likely, so strong is habit, that she then hurried into her husband's arms and had her cry upon his breast.
XI
I imagine that thereafter for a time John Fulton's attitude toward Lucy was now dignified and manly, and now almost childlike in its despair. Having made her love him once, he must have felt at first that he could make her love him again. I imagine him making love to her with all the chivalry and poetry that was in him, and then breaking off short to rail against fate, against the whole treacherous race of women, perhaps, and to ask what he had done to deserve so much suffering? "Why didn't you do this to me when I was proposing? Why did you wait till I was stone broke and worried half sick, with everything going from bad to worse? Is it anything I've done, anything I've failed to do? Why, Lucy, we were such a model of happiness that people looked up to us. How can anybody suddenly stop caring the way you have? If it had been gradual! But you were in love with me the night I went away, weren't you? Weren't you?"
Here he catches her shoulders and forces that one admission from her, and makes the great praying woebegone eyes meet his. Then, almost, he pushes her away from him.
"And I go away for a few days," he cries, "and come back and everything is changed. I who had a sweetheart, haven't even a wife. Why have you changed so? There must be a reason? What is it? Are you sick? Have you eaten something that has made you forget? Have you been bewitched? That's no fool question. Have you? Have you?"
"Have I what?"
"Have you been bewitched? Tell me, dear, who has done this thing to you?"
Again he has her by the shoulders.
"Lucy, is there someone? Never mind the other things, just tell me that? You've gotten to like someone else? Is that it?"