“Really!” said I, ironically. “And no doubt he found you open wide to conviction—now.” This a subtlety to let her know that I understood why she was seeking me.
“No,” she answered, lowering her eyes. “I knew—better than he.”
For an instant this, spoken in a voice I had long given up hope of ever hearing from her, staggered my cynical conviction. Then I said, mockingly: “Doubtless your opinion of me has been improving steadily ever since you heard that Mrs. Langdon has recovered her husband.”
She winced as if I had struck her. “Oh!” she murmured. If she had been the ordinary woman, who in every crisis with man instinctively resorts to weakness’ strongest weakness, tears, I might have a very different story to tell. But she fought back the tears in which her eyes were swimming and gathered herself together. “That is brutal,” she said, with not a touch of haughtiness, but not humbly, either. “But I deserve it.”
“There was a time,” I went on, swept in a swift current of cold rage—“there was a time when I would have taken you on almost any terms. A man never makes a complete fool of himself about a woman but once in his life, they say. I have done my time—and it is over.”
She sighed wearily. “Langdon came to see me soon after I left your house and went to my uncle,” she said. “I will tell you what happened.”
“I do not wish to hear,” replied I. “I have been waiting impatiently ever since you left for news of your plans.”
She grew white, and my heart smote me. She came into the room and seated herself. “Won’t you stop, please, for a moment longer?” she said. “I hope that, at least, we can part without bitterness. I understand now that everything is over between us. A woman’s vanity makes her belief that a man cares for her die hard. I am convinced now—I assure you I am. I shall trouble you no more about the past. But I have the right to ask you to hear me when I say that Langdon came, and that I myself sent him away; sent him back to his wife.”
“Touching self-sacrifice,” said I, ironically.
“No,” she replied. “I cannot claim any credit. I sent him away only because you and Alva had taught me how to judge him better. I do not despise him as do you; I know too well what has made him what he is. But I had to send him away.”