"You certainly can have nothing to say to me that I care to hear," Helen quietly returned.
"Indeed!" retorted Marie, with a short laugh. "Well, now, perhaps you may find yourself mistaken. At any rate, it may be for your interest to listen to me. To begin with, and not to mince matters, I want some money."
"Money!" repeated Helen, amazed at the audacious demand.
"Exactly. You appear to be in very comfortable circumstances, Mrs. Hungerford," said the actress, sweeping a comprehensive glance over Helen's rich and tasteful costume. "Fate seems to have treated you very kindly during the last ten years, and it is only fair that you should share the good things the gods have bestowed upon you with one less fortunate. Really, madam," she continued, with insolent sarcasm, "you appear to have gotten on better without your husband than you did with him; you must have become possessed of some potent mascot which has enabled you to rise above adverse circumstances and provide so handsomely for yourself. I heard, the last time I was in San Francisco, that you were in New York, making a lot of money as a crack music teacher; that you had given your daughter a fine education and many accomplishments; that you were living in luxury, and had made many influential friends. All this must have cost you a pretty sum, and your accounts can't be very small with your milliner and tailor, either, both of whom certainly do you and themselves great credit. Pray tell me how you have accomplished it all? I know you are a good manager; John told me that, and——"
"Where is he?" The question slipped out almost before Helen was aware of what she was saying. She only knew she feared he might have been with the party in the auto and would also appear upon the scene before she could get away.
"Blessed if I know, or care!" was the indifferent response. "I gave him the grand bounce three years ago."
"Do you mean——" Helen began, then checked herself. Why should she lower herself talking with this coarse creature? Why ask questions or seek information from her? What did it matter to her what she had or had not done, or what her relations with John now were?
"Do I mean that I divorced him?" the actress surmised the import of her question, and caught her up. "That is exactly what I did, and glad enough I was to be free from the lazy hanger-on! I was a fool ever to have anything to do with him. He had quite a bunch of money when we first went abroad, but when that was gone he just played the gentleman, and let me take care of him. I haven't seen him since—he may be dead, for all I know."
The heartlessness of her tone as she concluded implied that she did not care if he were dead, and Helen remembered with a thrill of horror how a sense of freedom had come to her with the same thought, not long ago. Could it be possible that she had fallen to the level of this vulgar woman? What was the motive that prompted them both to wish another human being out of the world? What but hate, the deadliest of all impulses. The words she had recently heard smote her again, with accusing force: "He that hateth his brother is a murderer."
The thought was so repulsive to her that involuntarily she threw out her hand in a gesture of repugnance and self-aversion.