Stainton saw him to the front door, and then returned to the drawing-room, where his wife stood just on the spot where he had left her.
"Now," said the husband, quietly. "I think that it is time we had an explanation."
She swayed a little, and he came forward to catch her; but at his approach she flew into a storm of hot anger.
She had found herself at last. What she had been she looked at squarely, what she was she would be entire. Stainton, in his habitual rôle of fond protector, was a figure that she could feel gently towards, could even pity; but Stainton as an accusing husband she now realised that she could not but hate. She looked at him with a scorn that was not lessened by the fact that, goading it from a deep recess in her heart, there cringed an imp of fear. She knew that she hated him.
Jim stopped short.
"Don't touch me!" she repeated. "You believe I've deceived you. Well, you never meant to go to Lyons. You have tricked me. You have lied to me!"
Tradition always shows us the wronged husband in a towering rage, in the throes of consuming indignation. Truth, however, with no respect for either man or his traditions, occasionally assigns to the deceiving wife the part of condemner. Constant though truth is, men are the slaves of their traditions, and when they meet truth, and tradition is contradicted, they are confused. In spite of the evidences of his senses, it did not for that moment so much as occur to Stainton to pursue the part of judge. Instead, he pulled a chair a little nearer to her.
"Won't you sit down?" he asked.
Muriel sat down.