"Who has been educating you to talk this way?"
"Necessity. There is no real room for ignorance in my profession. So I don't go to parties any more; I try to educate myself. There are cultivated people in the company. They have been very kind to me. And my carelessness in English—my lack of polish—these were not inherited. My father was an educated man, if he was nothing else. You know that. Your father knew it. All I needed was to be awakened. And I am awake."
She looked honestly into the honest eyes that met hers, and shook her head.
"No self-deception can aid us to lie down to pleasant dreams, Jacqueline. And the most terrible of all deceptions is self-righteousness. Let me know myself, and I can help myself. And I know now how it would be with me if the happiness of marriage ever came to me. I would give—give everything good in me, everything needed—strip myself of my best! Because, dear, we always have more to give than they; and they need it all—all we can give them—every one."
After a silence they kissed each other; and, when Cynthia had departed, Jacqueline closed the door and returned to her chair. Seated there in deep and unhappy thought, while the slow minutes passed without him, little by little her uneasiness returned.
Eight o'clock rang from her little mantel clock. She started up and went to the window. The street lamps were shining over pavements and sidewalks deserted. Very far in the west she could catch the low roar of Broadway, endless, accentless, monotonous, interrupted only by the whiz of motors on Fifth Avenue. Now and then a wayfarer passed through the silent street below; rarely a taxicab; but neither wayfarer nor vehicle stopped at her door.
She did not realise how long she had been standing there, when from behind the mantel clock startled her again, ringing out nine. She came back into the centre of the room, and, hands clasped, stared at the dial.
She had not eaten since morning; there had been no opportunity in the press of accumulated business. She felt a trifle faint, mostly from a vague anxiety. She did not wish to call up the club; instinct forbade it; but at a quarter to ten she went to the telephone, and learned that Desboro had gone out between eight and nine. Then she asked for Cairns, and found that he also had gone away.
Sick at heart she hung up the receiver, turned aimlessly into the room again, and stood there, staring at the clock.
What had happened to her husband? What did it mean? Had she anything to do with his strange conduct? In her deep trouble and perplexity—still bewildered by the terrible hurt she had received—had her aloofness, her sadness, impossible to disguise, wounded him so deeply that he had already turned away from her?