"You've known for months and years—known that there was someone," Esmé repeated; her red lips drew away from her white teeth as she sat, stunned. So Bertie had believed her a light woman, untrue to him, a creature vending her beauty to some man. That, too, the consequence of her deceiving, of her folly.
She sat still, a stricken thing, her eyes alone alive in her face.
"That, I suppose, was why you changed to me," she whispered, in a curious metallic voice.
"That was why I ceased to love you—to live with you as your husband," he said simply and very sadly.
"That too!" The words rasped from between her white teeth, and suddenly she laughed—a hopeless, mirthless laugh, coming in noisy gusts; laughed, sitting there, white and haggard, until the laughter changed to gulping, sobbing gasps.
"Don't, Esmé, don't," he cried. "Don't laugh like that."
She got up, her rich dress trailing round her thin limbs, the fire of her jewels catching the gleams from the electric light.
"So you won't let me divorce you?" she said. "Well, find my fellow-sinner if you can, and for the present say good-night to Mrs Cain."
Still laughing, she moved slowly across the room, and into her own; shut the door quietly behind her.
"That too!" she said. "Cut by Society; suspected by her husband." Oh, poor Esmé, just because she was a selfish, wicked fool. Poor Esmé—who was once so happy.