Her tone was frank. I felt relieved.
“He is exceedingly clever,” I said, heartily, and we relapsed into silence.
When we reached home, and Margot had removed her cloak, she came up to me and laid her hand on my arm.
So unaccustomed was her touch now that I was startled. She was looking at me with a curious, steady smile—an unwavering smile that chilled instead of warming me.
“Ronald,” she said, “there has been a breach between us. I have been the cause of it. I should like to—to heal it. Do you still love me as you did?”
I did not answer immediately; I could not. Her voice, schooled as it was, seemed somehow at issue with the words she uttered. There was a desperate, hard note in it that accorded with that enigmatic smile of the mouth.
It roused a cold suspicion within me that I was close to a masked battery. I shrank physically from the touch of her hand.
She waited with her eyes upon me. Our faces were lit tremblingly by the flames of the two candles we held.
At last I found a voice.
“Can you doubt it?” I asked.