He put her in, paid the driver and gave the direction. "I'm sorry you had not quite finished your lunch," he said perfunctorily, looking in.
She bit her lip and averted her head; but she was aware, in spite of her refusal to see, or hear, or speak to him, that before her cab had started he was returning back with a swift step into the restaurant.
There sat the wife who held all the cards—as wives do if they will only play them aright. She was not smiling, nor exultant, nor blatant over it, but triumph was in every line of her as she waited there, slender, lovely, and sartorially exquisite. From the tip of her shoe to the crown of her hat she was conquest.
He sat down, thinking over words to say, and she looked at him critically, yet eagerly, and waited for him to speak.
He cleared his throat.
"Marie," he said, "hang lunch—until you understand me. This has been an extraordinary quarter of an hour. I didn't know you had it in you. You women—you have me fairly beat. I just want—I hope—I long for you to believe me, when I tell you that rot she talked about divorce ... that is to say, I swear to you, that, except on circumstantial evidence, you wouldn't have the ghost of a case. But, Marie, on circumstantial evidence, I—I don't know that a judge and jury wouldn't convict me."
His wife was still looking at him critically, eagerly; and he met her eyes full, and saw, down in the depths wherein had been his delight, a great faith.
She believed him.
He tingled with joy. "I've been a fool," he weighed out slowly. "We are; and we—we want looking after, you know. We can't stand our wives forsaking us. We ask a lot of you, I suppose. Yes, it's a lot."
"Well," she murmured, "we've always got it to give. We're made that way."