"The damned scoundrel!" said Harvey thickly.
But she reached over and put a trembling hand over his lips.
"Don't say that," she said. "Don't! I won't allow you to. When I think what may have happened to him, I—" Her voice broke.
"Go on," Harvey said in cold tones she had never heard before. "Tell it all, now you've begun it. God knows I didn't want to hear it. He took you to the hotel at Dunkirk, the way those foreigners take their women. And he established you in the house at the Front, I suppose, like a—"
Sara Lee suddenly stood up and drew off her ring.
"You needn't go on," she said quietly. "I had a decision to make to-night, and I have made it. Ever since I came home I have been trying to go back to where we were before I left. It isn't possible. You are what you always were, Harvey. But I've changed. I can't go back."
She put the ring into his hand.
"It isn't that you don't love me. I think you do. But I've been thinking things over. It isn't only to-night, or what you just said. It's because we don't care for the same things, or believe in them."
"But—if we love each other—"
"It's not that, either. I used to feel that way. A home, and some one to care about, and a little pleasure and work."