"My God, Felicity!" he gasped, "I believe you 've kept her in this house like a bird in a cage, to torture her as you 've tortured me. Why did n't you send her away, when you discovered I 'd been making love to her?"
"For your greater convenience?"
"Oh, as for that," he retorted, "when you left her here in Warwick and went away, you practically threw her into my arms. But I did n't take advantage of it,—only once,—and then I stopped short. That was what I came to explain. I want you to know how much less cause you have to throw me over in this way than you think. I want you to forgive me, and to keep your promise. She's nothing to me—nothing. She 's no more to me than any one of the dozen men you 've been running around with are to you,—Cobbens, for example, or that young professor up at the Hall."
There was more than a suggestion of scorn in his refusal to mention his real rival by name, and in the belittling adjective. His assumption that she cared nothing for Leigh would perhaps have found acceptance in her mind only the day before, but now a memory of last night's scene made her as cruel to her husband as he had just been to Lena Harpster. She looked at him coolly, aware of her utter awakening from the adventurous and romantic mood she had mistaken for love, wondering also that she should ever have supposed this man capable of satisfying her ideal. The ideal itself had vanished in the personality of the man who had taken her in his arms the previous night and poured his passionate love into her ears.
"It is n't a question of forgiving, Tom," she said, after a pause; and her tone was conciliatory. "It's a question of discovery. I was deceived in you. I did n't think you capable of such—such weakness and vulgarity. It was my fault of judgement, perhaps, but the awakening is fatal. Can't you see that?"
"What do you mean to do?" he demanded, glaring at her helplessly. Their points of view were so different, her expression so unrelenting, that the self-justification he had planned to speak was choked in his throat. "Do you mean to get a divorce? I tell you, Felicity, there 's no cause."
"I don't know yet what I mean to do," she said frankly.
"I 'll call upon your father, then," he declared grimly, "and see what he thinks of it." An ugly gleam shone in his eyes, as he uttered the threat. It was plain now that love for his wife was the least of his motives in demanding her; there was ambition, but, strongest of all, a desire for revenge on the bishop and his class. He would make them accept him at last. They should pay dearly for their scorn. "I 'll not be elbowed out of the way and kept in the closet like a family skeleton any longer," he went on. "The limit of my endurance has been reached."
Felicity now saw clearly what she had brought upon herself. She paled with fear, and flushed with anger, but neither emotion coloured her reply.
"You must give me a few days longer. I prefer to see my father first—alone. I will let you know—I'll write."