“It was not the City’s fault. I surrendered my place to Sophy.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense. There is always room enough and a welcome at Mrs. Montford’s luncheons; but no doubt on a warm July morning the City is more attractive than Mayfair.”
“Certainly, for those who are making or losing money,” he answered, throwing down his paper and preparing to be sociable, though there was that in his wife’s tone which told him her heart was not at ease. “What was the City doing?” he repeated. “Buying and selling, getting and losing. It is not half a bad place on a summer morning, though you speak of it with the voice of the scorner. I walked across St. Paul’s Churchyard. They have turned an old burial-ground into a flower-garden; and there were nurses and children, and homeless ragamuffins lying asleep in the sun, and pigeons—tame pigeons—that fed out of the children’s hands. It might have been Venice.”
He started and turned deadly pale. It was the first time he had ever pronounced the name of the fatal city, voluntarily, in his wife’s hearing. His nerves were overstrained—as much as hers, perhaps—and the mere name took his breath away.
Eve saw the startled look, the sudden pallor.
“I understand!” she cried passionately. “It was at Venice you met that woman. Venice, not Verona. The very name of the place agitates you! The very name of the place where you knew her and loved her moves you more than all I have said to you—than all my pain!”
“You are a fool,” he said roughly, “like Fatima, the type of all woman-fools.”
“It was Venice.”
“It may have been Venice. Who cares; or what does it matter?”
“It may have been! What hypocrisy! Do you think I am a child, to be hoodwinked by your feeble prevarications? Every look, every word, tells me that you have loved that woman better than you ever loved me—that you are still in her net.”