I was abashed; I was humiliated; I was nigh to tears. I choked it all down, and I strode on beside her, my rage smouldering within me. But it was flaring up again by the time we reached the house with no more words spoken between us. She went to her room without another glance at me, and I repaired straight in quest of Fifanti.
I found him in the library. He had locked himself in, as was his frequent habit when at his studies, but he opened to my knock. I stalked in, unbuckled my sword, and set it in a corner. Then I turned to him.
“You are doing your wife a shameful wrong, sir doctor,” said I, with all the directness of youth and indiscretion.
He stared at me as if I had struck him—as he might have stared, rather, at a child who had struck him, undecided whether to strike back for the child's good, or to be amused and smile.
“Ah!” he said at last. “She has been talking to you?” And he clasped his hands behind him and stood before me, his head thrust forward, his legs wide apart, his long gown, which was open, clinging to his ankles.
“No,” said I. “I have been thinking.”
“In that case nothing will surprise me,” he said in his sour, contemptuous manner. “And so you have concluded...?”
“That you are harbouring an infamous suspicion.”
“Your assurance that it is infamous would offend me did it not comfort me,” he sneered. “And what, pray, is this suspicion?
“You suspect that... that—O God! I can't utter the thing.”