"If I were free of Lorraine I think I should be satisfied; it would be worth everything else—but I'm not."
"Not legally free, but free in fact," he answered. "And you'll be legally free also in a short time—a very short time. Lorraine's present mind can't last much longer, Stephanie."
"I hope you're a true prophet," said she, withdrawing her hand—as Tompkins appeared to light the candles in their big glass shades.
"I wish I were as certain of something else as I am of that," he reflected slowly, studying the coal of his cigarette, but watching her face with deliberately avowed surreptitiousness.
And she observed it and inferred what he meant, and her pulses beat a trifle faster, but beyond a smile, which she contrived to be half-puzzled, half-questioning, and wholly fascinating, she made no answer.
She was lovelier now, he thought, than he had ever seen her. Her figure, in its clinging narrow evening gown, had rounded into the most adorable curves, though retaining all its youthful slenderness. Two years ago she had suggested what to-night she was—a glorious woman. And the flawless face, ordinarily so cold in its beauty, was soft and tender as he had never thought to see it. He bent over and deliberately looked her in the eyes—and she, from the recess of her chair, knowing that he would come no further, calmly looked him back. Neither spoke—yet the one told a purpose formed, and the other did not warn him to desist.
"Do you realize just how lovely you are?" he asked.
"Yes," she smiled. "I have my eyes and my mirrors—and an admiring maid."
"But you haven't——" he began—and broke off. He was about to say "you haven't a husband to tell you."