Aldous rose.
"You mean," he said in an altered voice, after a pause of silence, "that another influence—another man—has come between us?"
She sat up, and with a strong effort drove back her weeping.
"If I could say to you only this," she began at last, with long pauses, "'I mistook myself and my part in life. I did wrong, but forgive me, and let me go for both our sakes'—that would be—well!—that would be difficult,—but easier than this! Haven't you understood at all? When—when Mr. Wharton came, I began to see things very soon, not in my own way, but in his way. I had never met any one like him—not any one who showed me such possibilities in myself—such new ways of using one's life, and not only one's possessions—of looking at all the great questions. I thought it was just friendship, but it made me critical, impatient of everything else. I was never myself from the beginning. Then,—after the ball,"—he stooped over her that he might hear her the more plainly,—"when I came home I was in my room and I heard steps—there are ghost stories, you know, about that part of the house. I went out to see. Perhaps, in my heart of hearts—oh, I can't tell, I can't tell!—anyway, he was there. We went into the library, and we talked. He did not want to touch our marriage,—but he said all sorts of mad things,—and at last—he kissed me."
The last words were only breathed. She had often pictured herself confessing these things to him. But the humiliation in which she actually found herself before him was more than she had ever dreamed of, more than she could bear. All those great words of pity and mercy—all that implication of a moral atmosphere to which he could never attain—to end in this story! The effect of it, on herself, rather than on him, was what she had not foreseen.
Aldous raised himself slowly.
"And when did this happen?" he asked after a moment.
"I told you—the night of the ball—of the murder," she said with a shiver; "we saw Hurd cross the avenue. I meant to have told you everything at once."
"And you gave up that intention?" he asked her, when he had waited a little for more, and nothing came.
She turned upon him with a flash of the old defiance.