He glared at her speechless, her cool, quiet words stinging him sharply, and widening the gulf between them. Before it was a turbulent stream; now a rushing river.
"And then you might be Bruce Conway's wife," he says, bitterly, at last, "and be happy ever after in his love. Is that what you mean, fair lady?"
"Oh, no, no, no! I should never marry again! I should not want to—nor dare to! Oh, Heaven, what has love ever brought me but agony?" with a despairing gesture of her clenched white hand.
"Ta, ta!" he says, with a light, sarcastic laugh. "You should not judge the future by the past. You 'may be happy yet,' as one of your songs prettily expresses it. Certainly, you may have a divorce if you wish, only,"—stooping to lift his boy in his arms—"in that case, you know, the law will give this dear little fellow into my sole care and keeping; though, of course, the blissful bride of Conway will not miss the child of the man she never loved."
If that last taunt struck home she did not betray it, save that she whitened to her lips as she slowly reiterated his words.
"The law would take my baby from me?"
"Yes, of course; that is the law of the land—do you still desire to have a divorce?"
"Oh, God, no! I never did, except for your sake. I felt myself to be a burden on your unwilling hands, on your unwilling heart, and I simply could not bear the thought. But my baby—don't take him from me, Paul! I have suffered until I thought I could bear no more, and that, oh! that would be death. He is all I have to love me now."
She caught her child from his arms and held him strained to her beating heart, feeling for the first time the awful agony of a mother's dread of losing her loved one. Her husband looked at her with no trace of his feelings written on his still face, and merely said: