She interrupted him with a sound that was half a sob.
“Ah, Robert!—please don’t. What does it matter now? It hurts me so to hear you—and you see I know.... What does it matter when it first——” Her voice sank almost to a whisper, but she recovered herself. “Under the circumstances,” she added, “what was I to think of your invitation to Dick?”
There was another silence.
“Cecily,” he began again at last, clearing his throat, “do you—do you really imagine——?”
She turned once more and looked him full in the face, and again his eyes fell before hers. “What I try to imagine, is that you didn’t think,” she said, slowly. “You were so engrossed that you had forgotten—much. But sometimes, Robert—to be truthful—I find it hard to accept even that explanation.”
He continued to walk restlessly about the room. “So you—you impute to me vile motives like that?” he asked, uneasily.
“You do think them vile? I’m glad of that,” she answered, slowly. “In any case you didn’t know Dick. He loves me as you have never loved me.”
He turned sharply and gazed at her. “You dare to tell me that!”
“Yes,” said Cecily, quietly, “I dare. I owe it to Dick that I’m no longer the miserable, helpless woman I was when he came home. Then, I was dependent for all that makes life upon the love of one man—who had failed me. Now, I have a life of my own, friends of my own, work of my own. And it was Dick who showed me how to trust myself, and shake myself free!”
He stood looking at her. In the midst of the whirl of emotions within him, jealousy, resentment, humiliation, and a childish longing for comfort, he thought how beautiful she was. He realized every detail of her gleaming dress; he saw the whiteness of her breast, the curve of her lips, the droop of her cloudy hair.