The colour flamed in Teresa’s cheeks.
“There is a world of difference. One is right. The other is—sin! It is wicked to love your friend’s wife.”
Dane’s lips twisted in a grim smile.
“It is a misfortune, Teresa, a horrible misfortune for us all, but there is nothing that could possibly be called wicked about it, as matters stand to-day. Don’t be too hard on me. I am about as miserable as a man can be. There seems no way out of it. I’d give everything I possess, if I could go back and be as I was when we were first engaged, content and happy, with the prospect of happiness to come.”
“I did make you happy for a time, then, even though it wasn’t—the best?” Teresa’s face relaxed from its hard composure; a faint twitching showed at the corner of the mouth. “Dane! what was it? Tell me! I must know. What was it made you love her more? She’s beautiful, but I’m pretty too, and so much younger, and she wears lovely clothes, but you liked me to be simple; and she’s clever and amusing—sometimes! but other times she’s quite dull, and we had always plenty to say, you and I. I took an interest in all you did.”
Dane’s sigh was compounded of pity for Teresa, and for himself at the memory of that “interest.” It was true that she had questioned him ceaselessly about his affairs, and had on frequent occasions offered advice concerning their management. He had been mildly bored, mildly amused; looking back on his intercourse with his fiancée, a contented boredom seemed to have been his normal condition. And she compared herself with Cassandra, wanted—pitiful heavens! to have the difference defined. He shook his head in dumb helplessness, but Teresa’s flat voice obstinately repeated the request.
“Dane! You must tell me why?”
“Teresa, it’s impossible. Good God, don’t you realise how impossible it is? Why did you care for me instead of other fellows, younger, better looking—that young Hunter, for example?”
“Mr Hunter never paid me any attention.”
“You mean to say,” he stared at her blankly, “that if he had, if any man had—”