“She—she is not dead, then?”
“No—but dead to you.”
“Mr. Cappeze,” said Spurrier steadily, “are you sure that I may not have explanations that may change her view of me?”
“We know,” said the lawyer in a voice out of which the passion had passed, but which had the dead quality of an opinion inflexibly solidified, “that since your marriage, you never made her the companion of any hour that was not a backwoods hour. We know that you never told us the truth about yourself or your enterprises—that you came to us as a friend, won our confidence, and sought to exploit us. Your record is one of lies and unfaithfulness, and we have cast you out. That is her decision and with me her wish is sacred.”
The returned exile stood meeting the relentless eyes of the old man who had been his first friend in these hills and for a few moments he did not trust himself to speak.
The shock of those shuttered windows and that blankly staring front at the house where he had looked for welcome; the collapse of all the dreams that had sustained him while a prisoner in an internment camp and a refugee hounded across the German border were visiting upon him a prostration that left him trembling and shaken.
Finally he commanded his voice.
“To me, too, her wish is sacred—but not until I hear it from her own lips. She alone has the right to condemn me and not even she until I have made my plea to her. Great God, man, my silence hasn’t been voluntary. I’ve been cut off in a Hun prison-camp. I’ve kept life in me only because I could dream of her and because though it was easier to die, I couldn’t die without seeing her and explaining.”
“It was from her own lips that I took my orders,” came the unmoved response. “Those orders were 290 that through me you should learn nothing. You had the friendship of every man here until you abused it—now I think you’ll encounter no sympathy. I told you once how the wolf-bitch would feel toward the man who robbed her of her young. You chose to disregard my warning—and I’ll ask you to leave my house.”