The color rushed to her cheeks. There was a little pause.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, looking at him steadily.
“My reasons must be fairly obvious.”
“They escape me,” returned Cecily. “Surely, Robert,” she added, after a breathless pause, “we need not continue the conversation you began the other evening?”
“There is every need,” he declared. “The last time we discussed this subject, you thought my attitude towards it ‘very funny,’ I remember. I’m sorry I haven’t your sense of humor. Funny as you may consider it, I intend to talk about what you find so ridiculous—my honor. It’s time, I think, since you seem to have forgotten yours.”
Cecily got up slowly from the sofa, and leaning against the mantelpiece, faced him with dangerously bright eyes.
“That is not true,” she said, deliberately. “But that it doesn’t happen to be true is no thanks to you.”
Kingslake, his nerves strained to the uttermost, had lost all self-control, and was letting himself go, but he recoiled a step before his wife’s gaze.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“You really want me to tell you?” Her voice came to him icily. “Very well, then, I will. Two years ago, I was a wretched, unhappy woman because you had ceased to care for me, and I had therefore ceased to care for—anything. But I never suspected there was a reason—I thought it had just happened so—I thought I had somehow failed to keep your love. Then, quite by chance, I heard of Philippa Burton.”