The sensitive color flew to her face, but she answered quite quietly and steadily:
"We could get a divorce—I don't think it is called that—but I know we could get a divorce—I—I've found out all about it."
Chris sat staring down at the floor. There was a dreadful feeling somewhere in the region of his heart, for he had never believed that she could be so hard and implacable.
She was not yet twenty, but she was calmly proposing to annul their marriage, if, at the end of a month, it still proved to be a failure.
He put her hand roughly from him and rose to his feet.
"You don't know what you're talking about, and I refuse to agree—I absolutely refuse." He began to pace the room agitatedly.
Marie watched him with hard eyes, then suddenly she said:
"If it's the money you're thinking about . . . I don't want any. I don't mind not having any. Aunt Madge would let me live with her; we could live quite quietly; it wouldn't cost much."
He turned scarlet.
"The money—good lord! I've never given it a thought." He swung round and looked at her with passionate eyes, and it slowly dawned upon him that there was something very sweet and desirable about Marie Celeste as she sat there in her blue gown, her soft dark hair 222 tumbled about her shoulders, and her brown eyes very bright in the pallor of her face.