A crimson flush swept across her face as she spoke, remembering that these were the years in which Claude Rutherford's influence had grown from a careless comradeship to an absorbing intimacy.
Her husband looked at her in silence for a few moments; and his grave smile had now a touch of irony.
"Has it dawned upon you at last?" he asked. "Have you discovered that we have been living apart; that we have been man and wife only in name?"
"It was not my fault, Mario. It was you who kept aloof."
"Not till I saw repulsion—not till I saw aversion."
"No, no—never, never, never! I have never forgotten your goodness—never forgotten all I owe you."
They had been sitting side by side on the spacious Louis Quatorze sofa, his hand upon her shoulder; but at her last words he started to his feet with a cry of pain.
"Yes, that is it—you recognise an obligation. I have given you a fine house, fine clothes, fine friends—and you think you ought to repay me for them by pretending to love me. Vera, that is all over. There must be no more pretending. I can bear a good deal, but I could not bear that. I told you something of my past life before we were married; but I doubt if I told you all its bitterness—all the blind egotism of my marriage, the cruel awakening from a dream of mutual love—to discover that my wife had married me because I could give her the things she wanted, and that love was out of the question. I compared myself with other men, and saw the difference; and as I had missed the love of a mother, so I had to do without the love of a wife. I was not made to win a woman's love—no, not even a mother's. This was why my affection for my daughter was something more than the common love of fathers. She was the first who loved me—and she will be the last."
"Mario, you are too cruel! Have I not loved you?"