As I did not answer, she continued—
“Of late you have not been like yourself. You used to trust me; we used to be so happy! If this is to go on, we had better separate; it makes my life a misery.”
She had touched the wrong chord, if she thought to move my pity. My jealous brain was at work at once. She was thinking of a separation, then? Perhaps she wished it; and perhaps the true reason was her love for that man?
I spoke out in the heat of the moment—
“If you wish to separate, it can be arranged.”
She looked at me so pleadingly, so piteously, that I had to turn my eyes away. In encounters of this kind the man has no chance against the woman, especially if he is magnanimous. What are all his arguments, all his indignation, against her battery of woeful looks, her tears, her pseudo-innocence, and real helplessness? One feels like a coward, too, in such an encounter. I did, I know.
Nevertheless, I was ready to give her the coup de grace.
“Show me that letter,” I said suddenly.
“What letter?” she asked, as if she did not comprehend.
“The letter you received from that man this morning.”