“That depends ... upon my own pleasure, Mr. Philip!” she returned, with a nervous smile.
“You have taken your pleasure too much into your own hands already. I must know where you were the other night, and with whom.”
“La! is your curiosity awake again so early? Ask me some other time. I’m not ready to tell you just yet.”
“No other time will do. I must tell you, since you seem ignorant of it, that your reputation as an honest woman is at stake. Bah! don’t try to escape me with subterfuges, Marion. I know that you were at Vauxhall Gardens; and that your companion was a man who—”
“Has he ... has any one been so base as to tell—”
“Any one!” thundered Philip, his eyes blazing. “Who?”
Marion lifted her head high, but she trembled all over, and her face was white. She met Philip’s fiery glance with a scornful look; but beneath the scorn there were unfathomable depths of pain, humiliation, appeal. Philip saw only the scorn; he was in no mood for insight. Thus the husband and wife confronted each other for several moments, while the air still seemed to echo with Philip’s angry shout.
“Philip,” said Marion at length, in a thin voice, which sustained itself with difficulty, “I have done you no wrong; and I should have been willing, some time, to tell you all you ask. But until you go down on your knees at my feet, and crave my pardon, I will not speak to you again!”
“Then we have exchanged our last words together,” said he.
Marion bent her head as if in assent, and moved to one side, so that her husband might leave the room. He paused at the door, and said: