"Oh!"
Feeling that candor was now thrust upon her, Georgia proceeded to explain to Stevens that she had never explained about him to her mother, for mama couldn't possibly understand, being old-fashioned and prejudiced in some regards.
"So you've made me fib for you," she finished. "Aren't you ashamed!"
"Yes," said he, in truth much gratified by her clandestineness.
"But what I don't see is——," he began, then broke off.
"Is what?"
"Is why you should be so disturbed about your mother's knowing."
"I've told you—for the sake of peace and a quiet life."
"But what about your husband?" He blurted it out suddenly, the word which had crucified him since his one and only visit to her home; the word which he had kept dumb between them until now. "What about him? Doesn't he mind?"
"He left me six months ago. You never supposed I would take a man's bread and—fool him, did you, Mason?" She called him by his name for the first time.