This threat, uttered not for the first time, made Herrick set his lips firmly, and for once his wife regretted her taunt.
"Oh, I'm not going to do it," she said with a laugh. "Good-bye, Toni, if you must go. I'll come and look you up in a day or two."
When Toni and Herrick were alone, walking along the towing-path in the darkness, Herrick turned to Toni with a sigh.
"Mrs. Rose, I can't tell you how sorry I am—nor how grateful I am both to you and Mr. Rose for your kindness to my poor little wife."
"Oh, don't say that," begged Toni, her warm heart filled with pity for him. "I like your wife immensely—we are friends, you know, and you must not forget she has suffered terribly."
"Yes, I suppose she has. And yet"—he spoke vehemently—"has she suffered so much as I have done—as I shall go on doing as long as we both live? Oh, I've no right to say it—I ought to be man enough to suffer in silence—but it's hard to bear her constant allusions to her prison life—her taunts—wouldn't you think she would be glad to forget all that, to put it behind her? Yet every day she talks of it. She never allows me to forget for one instant that she has been in hell—and every word she utters is an indictment of me, a reproach for the cowardice which let her go to prison."
"Oh, Mr. Herrick—I'm so sorry...."
The stammered words brought a smile to Herrick's face.
"Poor child! I ought not to blame her—rather to pity her.... I do pity her with all my heart. But she won't let me sympathize with her. One word and she flies at me. She is unhappy here, yet she will make no plans for going abroad. She talks as though I kept her here, when God knows I would go to the ends of the earth if she wished it."
"Yes, I know, but I think if you go on being patient with her," hazarded Toni, "she will come to her better self again. Don't you agree with me?"