‘And now,’ he asked with more decision than he had yet shown, ‘how are you living?’
She smiled maliciously.
‘Why do you want to know?’
He rose and stood frowning over her, and despite her assumed sang-froid she looked a little alarmed.
‘Because, when all is said and done, I am your husband! Whatever you now call yourself, you are the same Mary Goodwin whom I married at Oxford ten years ago, and the tie which links us together has never been legally broken. Yet I find you here, living in luxury, and I suppose in infamy. Who pays for it all? Who is your present victim?’
With an impatient gesture and a flash of her white teeth she threw her cigarette into the fire, and rose up before him trembling, with fear, or anger.
‘So you have found your tongue at last!’ she said. ‘Do you think I am afraid of you? No, I defy you! This is my house, and if you are not civil I will have you turned out of it. Bah! it is like you to come threatening me, at the eleventh hour.’
Her petulant rage did not deceive him; it was only a mask hastily assumed to conceal her growing alarm.
‘Answer my question, Mary!—how are you living?’
‘Sit down quietly, and I will tell you.’