“You always understand things, Sonia,” she said. “I’m tired. I mean to go to bed very early to-night.”
“But will he——?”
She raised her heavy eyebrows.
“I must rest to-night,” said Mrs. Clarke. “I must, I must.”
“Let me tell him, then, if he—”
“No, no.”
Mrs. Clarke put one hand to her lips. She heard Dion in the hall. When he came in she saw at once that he had been dashing cold water on his face. His eyes fell before hers. She could not divine what he had found in his letters or what was passing in his mind.
“Come to dinner,” she said.
And they went at once to the dining-room.
During the meal they talked because Mrs. Clarke exerted herself. She was helped, perhaps, by her concealed excitement. She had never before felt so excited, so almost feverishly alert in body and mind as she felt that night, except at the climax of her divorce case. And she was waiting now for condemnation or acquittal as she had waited then. It was horrible. She was painfully conscious of a desperate strength in Dion. It was as if he had grown abruptly, and she had as abruptly diminished. His savage assertion about the past had impressed her disagreeably. It might be true. He might really have succeeded in slaying his love for his wife. If so, what chance had the woman who had taken him of regaining her freedom of action. She was afraid to play her last card.