"Even though you didn't love me." Toni spoke quietly, even a little sadly, and Owen's heart sank as he realized what her words implied.
"I didn't love you?" For the life of him he did not know what to say.
"No. I thought you did—but it doesn't matter," said Toni a little drearily. "I'm sorry I made a scene just now, Owen. Please forgive me. I won't do it again."
And without waiting for a reply she opened the door and went out of the room, leaving Owen staring after her, stirred to the depths of his soul by something he thought he had read in her usually child-like eyes.
It was no child who had gazed at him as she spoke those last few words. It was a woman who had looked through Toni's Southern eyes in that moment of stress; and for the first time since his marriage, Owen wondered whether his estimate of Toni had been incorrect after all.
He had thought her soulless, a pretty, light-hearted, unselfish little comrade, swayed by feminine whims and caprices, but incapable of rising to the stature of the perfect woman; and lo, in one moment of unconscious revelation she had shown herself to him as a woman indeed, one who had realized that he had married her for some other cause than love, yet did not stoop to blame him.
But if Toni were indeed a woman, one capable, moreover, of a totally unexpected magnanimity, he had indeed been guilty of a serious mistake, and the very idea that he had misread Toni's character so hopelessly filled Owen with a humility as disturbing as it was complete.
CHAPTER XXI
The immediate effect of the little scene at the breakfast table was unfortunately that of an increased intimacy between Toni Rose and Herrick's wife.