"Loves me!" she laughed harshly. "When he married me for my money— when he left me alone all those weeks! If it hadn't been for you . . ." She pushed his arm away and rose to her feet. "Oh, I don't want to talk about him. I never wish to see him any more."
Feathers stood up, so that his big figure was between her and the door.
"He is coming here—this evening—to take you home," he said.
For an instant she stared at him with an ashen face; then she gave a little stifled scream.
"No, no; I can't! I never want to see him again! Let me go! Oh! Let me go! I thought you loved me, and now this is what you have done."
He put her into the chair again, keeping her hands firmly in his. He told her as briefly as possible of his conversation last night with Chris.
"It was never the truth that he married you for your money," he said. He said it over and over again, trying to drive it home to her. She looked so dazed and white, almost like a sleep-walker who had been roughly aroused.
"I alone am to blame," he insisted quietly. "But for me Chris would have found out from the first that he loved you . . . Oh, Marie, try and understand, dear—try and understand."
She looked up at him with vague eyes and nodded vacantly.
She was trying to understand; she wanted to understand, but her brain refused to work.