“He says you are his mistress.” As word by word her ear felt their whispered fall, the surge of emotion in his voice filled her with pain. Before the blow itself, however, not a nerve quivered. But her heart turned to ice.
“I felt like killing him. But these are not heroic days. Besides, such canaille are not worth it—if one has a work to do.”
“Not worth it—no,” she said at last, gently, and then, a woman: “Tell me, what led him, do you suppose, to say that?”
“Pure devilment. He knows you’re leaving him, he understands your value, and to give you up to me, of all people, is for one of his nature a bath of vitriol.”
“But it isn’t like him,” said Helen, “to indulge a mere spite. He is too big a man. There must have been a deeper, a subtler motive.”
“What do you think it can be?”
“He must have reckoned on an outside chance of your believing what he said.”
John’s look of sheer incredulity gave her a sudden insight into those hidden depths of character she had yet to penetrate. This new knowledge brought a glow of light to her eyes.
“I think,” he said, “as soon as you have lunched, you had better go to the telephone and tell them you are not returning to the Office. Here and now you must close this man down. You can never go back to Universe Building.”
She did not answer at once. Seconds only were recorded by heart and brain, but when she spoke a weight of years had been added to her voice. “I think you are right,” she said.