"So that it was partly Mr. Ingham, himself, in his insistence upon your renouncing your profession, who broke the engagement?"
"If you like."
"At least, your continuance in it made his jealousy more active?"
"It made it unbearable. And as it gradually became clear to me that he scarcely pretended to practise even the rudiments of the fidelity that he exacted, it seemed to me that there were limits to the insults which even a gentleman may offer to his betrothed. And I—freed myself."
Two or three people exchanged glances.
"Was the engagement ever broken before and patched up again?"
"We had quarreled before, but not definitely. Last spring I asked him to release me, and he would not. But he consented to my remaining on the stage, and to going away for the summer, so that I could think things out."
"And you immediately took a house from which to be married!"
"Yes. I tried to go on with it. I thought furnishing it might make me want to. But I couldn't. I wrote him so, and he came home. While he was on the ocean I found out something which made any marrying between us utterly impossible. When he drove to my house the day before he was killed, I told him so. We had a terrible scene, but he knew then as well as I that it was the end. I never saw him again."
"As a matter of fact, then, the definite breaking of the engagement was caused by something new and wholly extraneous to your profession or his jealousy?"