"Oh, Denis, how good you are to me!" burst from her lips. "How can I take you at your word? Do you not know that my heart is gone from me? I have no love to give you."
"Yes, yes, darling," he said, quickly, pressing her hand to his lips. "Do not pain yourself by speaking of it. I have guessed it. I have always seemed to know it. But it is hopeless, is it not? And I—I would so gladly take you away and comfort you if I could."
And so, in the end, she half yielded to him. What else was she to do? She gave him a sort of promise.
"If I can, it shall be as you wish," she said; "but give me till to-morrow night. I will think of it all day, and if you will come here again to-morrow evening, I will answer you. Give me one more day—only one," she repeated, with a dull reiteration, out of her utter weariness.
"One day will soon be gone," he said, joyfully, as he bade her good night.
Alas, how little he knew what that day was to bring forth!
That night the heavens were overcast with heavy clouds, and torrents of rain poured down upon the face of the earth, and peal after peal of thunder boomed through the heavy heated air. Helen could not sleep; she rose, feverish and unrested from her husband's side, and paced wildly and miserably about the room. Then she went to the window and drew back the curtain, and looked out upon the storm-driven world. The clouds racked wildly across the sky; the trees bent and swayed before the howling wind; the rain beat in floods upon the ground; yet greater and fiercer still was the tempest that raged in Helen Kynaston's heart. Hatred, jealousy, and malice strove and struggled within her, and something direr still—a terror that she could not quench nor stifle; for late that night her husband had said to her suddenly, without a word of warning or preparation—
"Helen, do you know a Frenchman called D'Arblet?"
Helen had been at her dressing-table—her back was turned to him—he did not see the livid pallor which blanched her cheeks at his question.
A little pause, during which she busied herself among the trifles upon the table.