"Yes," said the man.
Again there was a silence, and this time it was broken by the girl.
"I have never thought of him as dying," she said, and there was something like wonder in her voice. "He had gradually become settled in my mind as a sort of incubus—I felt that I was to see him always, smiling, immaculate and unscrupulous—a sort of beast with whom cleanliness took the place of a soul."
"You should have divorced him," said Bat. "It would have been the easiest way."
She shivered.
"He knew I would never do that," she answered. "He knew I was forever set against any such thing. My religion is against it; then," she gave a little gesture of loathing, "the actress and the divorce court had become associated in common jest; and I made up my mind that I would not add to its truth."
"He knew that, and he took advantage of it," said Bat.
"Was there anything that promised him a profit that Tom Burton did not take advantage of?" Her glorious eyes flashed and her head, superbly crowned with masses of bronze hair, was reared, the round, beautifully moulded chin was held high with scorn. "Was there anything, no matter how mean, that he wouldn't stoop to, so long as it enabled him to coddle his vices and go on in his idle way of life?"
Bat sat looking at the wonderfully beautiful and splendidly spirited creature; and he found himself wondering what had ever led her into a marriage with a man such as the one she had just described. And, as though in answer to his thought, she went on:
"But he had a way with him; his only study in life, so he told me once, had been women; and he knew how to get the better of them. When I first met him I was playing in a middle western city in a stock company which gave two performances a day and paid a fairly respectable salary. It was the first good engagement I'd ever had; the following of the theatre liked me and I began to be talked about; the east, and the creating of important parts did not seem so impossible as they had only a little while before.