Chris turned suddenly, his young face aged by pain and despair.
"She told me that she hated me." he said again. It seemed as if the fact was engraved on his heart and mind, to the exclusion of everything else. He broke off, breathing hard, as if he were choking. "She told me that she loved you—you who ruined my happiness and set her against me . . . Curse you, I say! Curse you to all eternity . . ."
"Chris, for God's sake!"
Chris turned away. He was shaking with passion, and for a long time neither of them spoke.
Then Feathers got up from the table and laid a hand on his friend's shoulder.
"Marie has never loved anyone but you," he said slowly. "She's been desperately unhappy, and when—when a woman is unhappy, she turns to the first friend who will listen to her! . . . Your wife turned to me . . . If I had been any other man, she would have done just the same. Will you believe me when I tell you that I know things are going to be all right? . . . Chris, for God's sake, believe me."
Chris shook his hand off impatiently.
"But when? How? You can't take away hatred with words." he said. "And she meant what she said . . . She's never looked at me like that in her life before . . ."
Feathers walked over to the window and looked out into the darkness. The stars seemed to be watching him with sympathetic eyes—the stars that were as far removed from him as was the woman he loved.
Chris spoke again presently: