"Supplied by Grayle?" I hazarded. She looked at me steadily without answering. "Well, when you've time, I should re-examine those proofs in the light of your general knowledge of your husband. If you're interested in my opinion of you"—her eyes lit up eagerly—"you'd sooner be insulted than ignored, wouldn't you?"—expectancy gave way to affected anger—"Well, I don't hate you, but you were a little fool to marry such a man; your instinct, your knowledge of life, your knowledge of him ought to have made it impossible. Having married him and considering his affliction, I blame you for not effacing yourself, obliterating your own individuality to stay with him. After that——" I dropped her hand and strolled to the window. "You were young, entitled to make your own life; it's not easy to justify, but it seems to follow almost naturally from the premisses. It happens to have turned out a failure, but no one can hate you for an error of judgement, particularly when you've shewn that your instinct about men is unreliable; you shewed it with O'Rane, I believe you shewed it before ... and fortunately pulled up before it was too late. I feel this so strongly that I told O'Rane it would be a tragedy, if you ever tried to come back to him; there'd be a second catastrophe worse than the first.... I'm afraid he's too much in love with you to use his imagination."
She pressed the palms of both hands against her eyes.
"I can't stay here," she exclaimed irrelevantly. "I've no right to turn David out."
"You needn't worry about that. He's given you the right, and you're turning him out for less than a week. For the matter of that——"
Her face grew suddenly set and her eyes scornful. "I suppose in spite of all the fine words this is all a trick to try and force me back here?"
"I've not the least doubt that O'Rane hopes you'll return to him," I told her frankly; "he probably will, even when he knows what's the matter with you,—no, he doesn't know even that at present;—but he's living in a fool's paradise."
With another of her quick facial regroupings—which is the only phrase I can find to indicate the shortening of a line here, its lengthening there, the droop or lift of the corners of her mouth, the dilatation of a pupil, the sudden gleam which turned her brown eyes almost golden, the tilt of the nose or the sudden birth of a dimple—she was smiling with her old demure self-confidence.
"I'm vain enough to think I can make almost any man want to live with me," she said, darting a glance from beneath lowered eyelashes.
"Come, that's more like yourself!" I laughed.
Thereupon the smiles and coquetry vanished as though I had struck her in the face. Yes, I had always hated her, always disapproved of her, regarded her as a flirt, taken everyone's side against her. There was no good in her, was there? Nothing ever to be said in her defense?... She lashed herself from one fury to another for ten minutes, only stopping from exhaustion and discouragement at my failure to answer.