"But you want to go!"
She did not answer, but, in the obscurity, he knew her large eyes were searching his face. He felt ashamed of what he had said, and yet because she made no protestation, he persisted:
"You have left off your jewels, those jewels you can't do without."
"Not to-night."
"You who are never happy without them—why not to-night?"
As, carried away by the jealousy of what lay beyond, he was about to continue, she laid her fingers on his lips, with a little brusk, nervous movement of her shoulders.
"Don't—you don't understand."
But he understood and he resented the fact that she should have put aside the long undulating rope of pearls, the rings of rubies and emeralds that seemed as natural to her dark beauty as the roses to the spring. He had tried to understand her woman's nature, to believe that no memory yet lingered about them, to accept without question what had never belonged longed to their life together, and remembering what he had fought down he thought bitterly:
"She has changed me more than I have changed her. It is always so."
She moved a little, her pose, with instinctive dramatic sense, changing with her changing mood.