‘I deny it,’ was the answer. ‘We are divorced; I divorced myself. It is just the same as if we had gone before the judge: a course you will surely never adopt, for it would disgrace you terribly and ruin me, perhaps.
Eustace is horribly proud, and if it should all come out about his keeping me, he would never forgive me. No, no, you’ll never be such a fool!’
Yet she watched him eagerly, as if anxious for some assurance that he would not draw her into the open daylight of a legal prosecution.
He answered her, as if following her own wild thoughts—
‘Why should I spare you? Why should I drag on my lifetime, tied by the law to a shameless woman? Why should I keep your secret and countenance your infamy? Do you take me for one of those men who have no souls, no consciences, no honour? Do you think that I will bear the horror of a guilty secret, now I know that you live, and that God has not been merciful enough to rid me of such a curse?’
It was the first time he had seemed really violent. In his pain he almost touched her with his clenched hand.
‘You had better not strike me!’ she said viciously.
At this moment the door opened, and a little boy (the same Bradley had seen at the theatre) ran eagerly in. He was dressed in a suit of black velvet, with bows of coloured ribbon, and, though he was pale and evidently delicate, he looked charmingly innocent and pretty.
‘Maman! maman!’ he cried in French.
She returned angrily, answering him in the same tongue—