"Course, it was too much for you!" he concluded aloud, self-reproachfully, when she did not speak. "You're tired; this ... this takin' care of this booze-soaked carcass was too much to ask of you. I—"
"Don't," she said, in a dry, flat voice, looking up at him appealingly, mastering her voice with a heroic effort. "Don't, please! This.... This booze-soaked ... carcass ...
"He is my husband."
The words with which she ended came in a listless whisper; she made no further sound, and the hissing of Bayard's breath, as it slipped out between his teeth, was audible.
All that he had said against that other man came back to him, all the epithets he had used, all the pains he had taken to impress on this woman, his wife, a sense of the utter degradation, the vileness, of Ned Lytton. For the instant, he was filled with regret because of his rash speech; the next, he was overwhelmed by realizing that all he had said was true and that he had been justified in saying those things of this woman's husband. The thought unpoised him.
"I didn't think you was married," he said, slowly, distinctly, his voice unsteady, scarcely conscious of the fact that he was putting what transpired in his mind into words. "Especially ... to a thing like that!"
The gesture of his one arm which indicated the prostrate figure was eloquent of the contempt he felt and the posture of his body, bent forward from his hips, was indication of his sincerity. He was so intense emotionally that he could not realize that his last words might lash the suffering woman cruelly. The thought was in him, so strong, so revolting, that it had to come out. He could not have restrained it had he consciously appreciated the hurt that its expression would give the woman.
She stared up at him, her numb brain wondering clumsily at the storm indicated in his eyes, about his mouth, and they held so a moment before she sat back in her chair, weakly, one wrist against her forehead.
"Here, come over by the window ... never mind him," he said, almost roughly, stepping to her side, grasping her arm and shaking it.
Ten minutes before the careful watching of that unconscious man had been the one important thing of the night, but now it was an inconsequential affair, a bother. Ten minutes before his interest in the woman had been a light, transient fancy; now he was more deeply concerned with her trouble than he ever had been with an affair of his own. He lifted the bandaged arm and placed a pillow beneath it, almost carelessly; then closed the door. He turned about and looked at Ann Lytton, who had gone to stand by the window, her back to him, face in her hands.