"I tell you that I do. I could never love anybody else. You are all that I have in the world; all I care for. You are absolutely everything to me. I loved you and married you; I took you for mine just as you were and are. And if I didn't quite understand all that—that you are—I took you, nevertheless—for better or for worse—and I mean to hold you. And I know now that, knowing more about you, I would do the same thing if it were to be done again. I would marry you to-morrow—knowing what I know."
"What more do you know about me than you did this morning, Jacqueline?" he asked, terribly troubled.
But she refused to answer.
He said, reddening: "If you have heard any gossip concerning Mrs. Clydesdale, it is false. Was that what you heard? Because it is an absolute lie."
But she had learned from Mrs. Clydesdale's reckless lips the contrary, and she rested her aching head on her hand and stared out at the endless lines of houses along Broadway, as the car swung into Yonkers, veered to the west past the ancient manor house, then rolled northward again toward Hastings.
"Don't you believe me?" he asked at length. "That gossip is a lie—if that is what you heard."
She thought: "This is how gentlemen are supposed to behave under such circumstances." And she shivered.
"Are you cold?" he asked, with an effort.
"A little."
He drew the fur robe closer around her, and leaned back in his corner, deeply worried, impatient, but helpless in the face of her evident weariness and reticence, which he could not seem to penetrate or comprehend. Only that something ominous had happened—that something was dreadfully wrong—he now thoroughly understood.