Athena Maule raised her tear-stained face. Her moment had at last come.
"There is a way out," she said slowly, impressively.
She put the palms of her hands on the other woman's breast—"Tell me, Jane, would it make you very unhappy, would you ever be able to forgive me—if I married Hew Lingard?"
Jane looked at her with troubled eyes. "I don't understand," she faltered. "Do you mean when—when Richard is dead, Athena?"
"No. Of course I don't mean that! What a horrible idea! But, Jane, there is a chance that I may become free. It is difficult to explain, but you may believe me when I tell you that if Richard were a different kind of man, if he was noble, if he was high-minded, as you are noble and high-minded——" Jane shook her head.
"Yes, you are—you are——What was I saying? Yes: if Richard were different he could have given me my freedom long ago, and our marriage could be dissolved even now."
As the younger woman made no movement, said no word, only went on looking at her in puzzled silence, Athena drew herself out of Jane's arms, and there came a look of impatience over her face.
"You are not a child! Surely you know what I mean, Jane? You must have heard of marriages being annulled? Richard has kept me tied to him all these years—years that I might have been free."
And, again, the strange thing was that Athena Maule, as she said those words, believed them—with certain mental reservations—to be true. It was certainly true that for the last eight years she, a passionate, living woman, had been tied to death in life.
She would have been shocked, angered, had any still small voice reminded her that the scheme she was now determined to carry through was a new scheme, one that she had never considered seriously till now, though she had told the lie which was the keystone of her scheme so often that she had at last begun to believe it must be true.