The man rose with an uneasy movement that brought him to the back of her chair. He stooped and whispered something. She flung up her arms and drew down his face to hers under the white arch they made.
Gibson did nothing scandalous. He went round quietly to the front door and let himself in with his latch-key. When he entered the smoking-room he found his wife there alone. She stood on his hearth, and met him with hard eyes, desperate and defiant.
"What have you to say for yourself?" he said.
"Everything," said she. "Of course you will divorce me."
"Will a separation not satisfy you?"
"No," she said, "it will not. If you haven't had proof enough I can give you more. Or you can ask the servants."
He had always given her what she wanted. He gave it her now.
II
Gibson went back to his mother.
The incident left him apparently unscathed. He showed no signs of trouble until four years after, when his mother died. Then the two shocks rolled into one, and for a year Gibson was a wreck.