CHAPTER XVI
A STRANGE DREAM
WHEN the others had gone, Jean Baptiste rolled over again upon the floor, and was conscious that one eye was closed and swollen, filled with blood from a wound inflicted by his wife just below it. He rose to a sitting posture presently, and looked around him. He was in the hall, and when he looked through the open door into the parlor, he saw Mrs. Merley stretched on the settee before him weeping. He staggered to his feet, and went toward her.
She looked up when he approached, and dried her eyes. "You spoiled things, Jean," she accused, and he noted the disappointment in her voice, and also detected a note of impatience.
"Yes, I admit I did, Mrs. Merley, and I'm sorry—for you."
"For me?" she repeated, not understanding his import.
"Yes," he replied wearily. "For you."
"But—but—why—for me?"
"Well," he said, with a sigh, "It had to be as it was. I wanted her. But it would have been disaster in the end on his account, because I could never have brought myself to honor him, and to have lived with her I should have been forced to—at least pretended to do so, and that would have been worse still."
She was thoughtfully silent then for some time, then she regarded him closely, and said as if to herself: