She laughed. "I had no idea that I could be so eloquent, Jack. But my mind has become curiously clear during the last year—strangely and unusually limpid and precise. Why, my poor friend, every plot of yours and of your friends—every underhand attempt to discredit and injure me has been perfectly apparent to me. You supposed that my headaches, my outbursts of anger, my wretched nights, passed in tears—and the long, long days spent kneeling in the ashes of dead memories—all these you supposed had weakened—perhaps unsettled—my mind. . . . You lie if you deny it, for you have had doctors watching me for months. . . . You didn't know I was aware of it, did you? But I was, and I am. . . . And you told them that my father died of—of brain trouble, you coward!"
Still he stood there, jaw loose, gazing at her as though fascinated; and she smiled and settled deeper in her chair, framing the gilded foliations of the back with her beautiful arms.
"We might as well understand one another now," she said languidly. "If you mean to get rid of me, there is no use in attempting to couple my name with that of any man; first, because it is untrue, and you not only know it, but you know you can't prove it. There remains the cowardly method you have been nerving yourself to attempt, never dreaming that I was aware of your purpose."
A soft, triumphant little laugh escaped her. There was something almost childish in her delight at outwitting him, and, very slowly, into his worn and faded eyes a new expression began to dawn—the flickering stare of suspicion. And in it the purely personal impression of rage and necessity of vengeance subsided; he eyed her intently, curiously, and with a cool persistence which finally began to irritate her.
"What a credulous fool you are," she said, "to build your hopes of a separation on any possible mental disability of mine."
He stood a moment without answering, then quietly seated himself. The suspicious glimmer in his faded eyes had become the concentration of a curiosity almost apprehensive.
"Go on," he said; "what else?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have been saying several things—about doctors whom I have set to watch you—for a year or more."
"Do you deny it?" she retorted angrily.