Lydia shook her head. "You never could do that when it came to the point. And in case of a duel, he is more handy than you. Besides, who fights duels nowadays? And think of the newspapers! You know as well as I that such a thing is out of the question—on Guen's account if for no other reason. It would be blazoned all over the country."
"On Guen's account! Why did you not think of her before you sacrificed us both?"
She looked back at him unruffled. "I am thinking of her now," she replied with her finished modulation. "I have told you I am what I am."
"Do not repeat that shallow sophistry," he exclaimed fiercely. "You are what you choose to be." But in the same breath he fell back in his seat with the air of one confounded. Then, resting his elbow on the arm of the chair and his cheek on his hand, he gazed at her from under his reddish, beetling brows as one might gaze at the sphinx. "What, then, do you suggest?" he asked wearily.
Lydia had shrugged her shoulders at his last stricture. Now raising again the cover of the book beside her and letting the leaves slip through her fingers, she replied slowly, "I suppose if you were a foreign husband you would accept the inevitable and console yourself as best you could. We should go our respective ways and ask no questions. I should be discreet and—and things would remain as they are so far as Guen is concerned."
"I see. But I am an American husband, and, though they have the reputation of being the most accommodating in the world, they draw the line at such an arrangement as you suggest."
"I thought very likely that you would. Then we must separate. Sooner or later, I suppose, you will be entitled to a divorce, if you wish it."
There was a pause. "Where will you go?" he asked in a hollow tone.
"I have not thought," she answered.