He looked up at her with a sad, hopeless expression in his face.
“She did not deny it, and I gave her the chance of doing so.”
What could any one say in reply to this? Even Phemie stood mute; while he went on angrily:—
“What did I ever do, that she should have played me false? Have I not been a good husband to her? Has she not had wealth and standing? Was she not poor, and did I not make her rich? If we did quarrel at times, it was all her own fault. Since—since Harry died, I swear to you, Phemie, I never have spoken a cross word to her—never. I have tried to live at peace with her. If I had been like other husbands——”
“Oh, Basil, stop!—oh, Basil, stop!” Phemie cried out shrilly, like one in some bodily pain; for, as he spoke, there came up before her the memory of another husband very unlike Basil indeed—a husband who had taken a young girl from poverty and drudgery to raise her to wealth and station—a husband who had never looked coldly on her—a husband who stood between his wife and the world—who had been so careful of her reputation that he would not acknowledge even to her that her purity was in peril—who removed the stumbling-block from her path, and the snare from her feet—and then grew suddenly old and infirm, and died bearing his burden of sorrow to the grave with him patiently.
Till she heard this man vaunting himself—this poor, weak, selfish sinner thanking God that he was not as other sinners—it had never fully come home to her what a great heart it was he and she had mutually broken—what a grand nature they had tricked and deceived.
But the dagger had found the vulnerable point at last, and every nerve in Phemie’s body thrilled with pain as she implored of him to stop.
For a moment he stared at her in surprise, but then he knew how he had hurt her—how and where; and a dead silence ensued—a silence like that which fell between them when she took her place opposite to his in the railway carriage, and told him there was no need to hurry.
During that pause each fought out a mental battle, and then, when they had waged their conflict, beaten down separately the phantoms that came up to reproach them, Phemie turned to Basil and said calmly, as though that cry of irrepressible agony had never escaped her lips:
“There is no name. Have you any idea who it is?”