"What! Have you no wish to be free?" he questioned, regarding her with astonishment.
"Yes, I would be very glad to feel that no fetters bound me," she answered, with clouded eyes; "but I vowed to be true as long as life should last, and I will never break my word."
"True!" repeated her companion, bitterly.
A flush of indignation mounted to the beautiful woman's brow at the reproach implied in his word and tone.
But she controlled the impulse to make an equally scathing retort, and remarked, with a quiet irony that was tenfold more effective.
"Well, if that word offends you, I will qualify it so far as to say that, at least, I have never dishonored my marriage vows; I never will dishonor them."
Gerald Goddard threw out his hands with a gesture of torture, and for a moment he became deathly white, showing how keenly his companion's arrow had pierced his conscience.
There was a painful silence of several moments, and then he inquired, in constrained tones:
"What, then, is my duty? What relations must I henceforth sustain toward—Anna?"
"I cannot be conscience for you, Gerald," said Isabel Stewart, coldly; "at least, I could offer no suggestion regarding such a matter as that. I can only live out my own life as my heart and judgment of what is right and wrong approve; but if you have no scruples on that score—if you desire to institute proceedings for a divorce, in order to repair, as far as may be, the wrong you have also done Anna Correlli—I shall lay no obstacle in your way."