For once, Hamilton was susceptible; and he was keenly distressed, momentarily.
"Cicily!" he cried. "You don't doubt my love, do you? Why, when a man and a woman marry, each ought to take the other's love for granted—take it on faith."
But the wife was in no wise consoled by this trite defense. It had been made too familiar to her in previous discussions between them. Her answer was tinged with bitterness:
"That's the only way in which I've had a chance to take it lately," she said slowly, with her eyes downcast.
The persistence of her mood aggravated the man beyond the bounds of that restraint which he had imposed on himself. His nerves were overwrought, and, under the impulse of irritation over another worry at home added to those by which he was already overburdened, he flared.
"Cicily!" he exclaimed, sharply. "What in the world has come over you? You don't want to hold me back, do you? You don't want to be that sort of a wife?"
"Charles!" Cicily exclaimed, in her turn sharply. She was grievously hurt by this rebuke from the man whom she loved.
"Forgive me!" Hamilton begged, swiftly contrite. "I'm just nervous—tired. It's been a fearfully hard day downtown."
His obvious sincerity won instant forgiveness. Cicily rose from her chair, and came to seat herself on the arm of his. He took one of her hands in his, and her free hand stroked his hair in a familiar caress. When she spoke, it was with a tenderness that was half-humility.
"Would it help, dear, to talk to me? We used always to talk over things, you know. Don't you remember? You said ever so many times that I had so much common sense!"