The only thing he could see distinctly against his closed lids was the face of Marie Celeste as she had said, "Oh, if you knew how I hate you!"
He would always hear her voice to his dying day. He would carry the memory of it with him to the grave.
Imagination came to add to his torture. What had happened between her and his friend during all those days they had been together?
Was it true what Marie had told him, that Feathers had never spoken one word of love to her? He tried to disbelieve it, but he knew his friend to be an honorable man.
Feathers was no wife-stealer; Feathers was the straightest chap in the world.
Then came a revulsion of feeling. He hated him! He would kill him if he came in now! Chris started up and began pacing the room.
What was to be the end of it all? He was helpless—powerless! And he loved her so . . .
Fool that he had been never to know it before—to need the hysterical outburst of a woman for whom he cared less than nothing, to show him how much he loved his wife.
He thought of the scene on the golf links with Dorothy, and a shiver of distaste shook him. He had never dreamed that she cared for him, that he was any more to her than she was to him—and at first he had been sorry for her, and ashamed of his own shortsightedness. Then he had grown angry and disgusted.
And that hell-cat, Mrs. Heriot, had seen it all! Chris struck his clenched fist against his forehead. He had never met a woman who was fit to hold a candle to Marie Celeste. And then, with that thought, the agony began all over again.