"She said she hated me—Marie said so," he stumbled on. "She looked as if she meant it, too . . . My God, you don't know what it was like, to have to stand there and listen! I think I went mad—I 268 know I hurt her, but I didn't know what I was doing . . . I'd give my soul to undo the past three months and start again. It's all been my fault!" He brought his clenched fist down on the table with a crash. "Blind, insensate fool that I am! I never knew that she was more to me than anything on earth . . ."
Feathers closed his eyes, and for a moment there was absolute silence. He had never heard Chris speak with such passionate despair before; had not believed him to be capable of so much feeling, and it drove home to him with brutal force the terrible tragedy upon the brink of which they now stood.
It was not merely his own happiness, or Marie's that was involved, but that of his friend as well, for Feathers knew with unerring instinct that Chris had only spoken the simple truth when he said that he loved his wife. He had been slow to realize it perhaps, but now it had come Feathers knew him sufficiently well to know that it would be deep and lasting.
He braced himself for the thing which he knew was yet to come, and a terrible feeling of enmity rose in his heart against this friend of his, who had never discovered that he loved Marie until the fact that he stood in great danger of losing her, had been driven home to him.
Half an hour ago Feathers had told himself that he must give her up, but now he had forgotten that, and all his love and strength rose in defense of her. She was his—he would hold her against all the world.
Chris was pacing the room agitatedly, and after a moment he broke out again:
"That isn't all—it isn't the worst—" he swung round looking at Feathers with haggard eyes. "How would you feel," he demanded hoarsely, "if your own wife told you that she cared for another man?"
There was a poignant silence, and as their eyes held one another, the realization came home to Feathers with overwhelming shock, that in spite of everything he had heard, in spite of what Marie herself had told him, Chris still trusted him and believed in him. He tried to find his voice, but it seemed to have deserted him, and as he 269 cast desperately about for words, Chris turned away and flung himself down into a chair, his face buried in his hands.
There was a long silence, then he said in a dreary, muffled voice:
"It's only what I deserve, I know—but . . ." He could not go on. He was up again, pacing the room in a frenzy of impotence.