Hamilton leaned forward in his chair, to regard his wife scrutinizingly. He was filled with alarm over the nervous, almost hysterical, condition in which he now beheld her.
"Cicily, are you well?" he asked. There was a distinct quaver of fear in his voice. "You look—strange, somehow."
"Oh, not at all!" came the flippant retort. "It's merely that you haven't really taken a good look at me lately—until just this minute. So, of course, I'd look a bit strange to you."
It must be remembered that Hamilton, although usually intelligent, had a clear conscience and no suspicion whatsoever as to any culpability on his part in his relations with his wife: thus it was that now he was wholly impervious to the sarcasm of her reference, which he answered with the utmost seriousness.
"My dear, I saw you this morning, last night—oh, heaps of times, every day."
"Oh, your physical eyes have seen; but your mind, your heart, your soul—the true you—hasn't seen me for I don't know how long."
This cryptic explanation was too subtle for Hamilton to grasp while yet his brain was fogged by the intricacies of his business affairs. He gazed on his wife in puzzled fashion for a few seconds, then abandoned the problem as one altogether beyond his solving. To clear up a vague suspicion that this might be some new astonishing display of a woman's indirect wiles, he put a question:
"My dear, do you want a new automobile, or a doctor?"
"Neither!" came the crisp reply; and for once the musical voice was almost harsh, "I want a husband!"