"What of him?" she asked, rising to her feet and moving away from him.
"He is alive."
Jack did not dare look at his wife. He sat with his face white and pinched with anguish.
The young wife groaned in her agony. The blow had fallen. Dick alive, and she now the wife of another man? What of her promise? What must he think of her?
"I didn't know it until after we were engaged," pursued Jack; "six months. It was the day I questioned you about whether you would keep your promise to Dick if he returned. I wanted to tell you then, but the telling meant that I should lose you. He wrote to me from Mexico, where he had been in the hospital. He was coming home—he enclosed this letter to you."
Jack drew from his pocket the letter which Dick enclosed in the one which he had sent Jack, telling of his proposed return.
She took the missive mechanically, and opened it slowly.
"I wanted to be square with him—but I loved you," pleaded Jack. "I loved you better than life, than honor—I couldn't lose you, and so—"
His words fell on unheeding ears. She was not listening to his pleadings. Her thoughts dwelt on Dick Lane, and what he must think of her. She had taken refuge at the piano, on which she bowed her head within her arms.
Slowly she arose, crushing the letter in her hand. In a low, stunned voice she cried: "You lied to me."