"Is it?"
"It's only fair to you to tell you that if your husband brought an action for divorce and won it I should not be in a position to marry you."
It must have seemed an age to him before she answered. She rose slowly to her feet.
"I don't think that my husband ever thought of bringing an action."
"Then why in God's name have you been frightening me out of my wits?" he asked.
She looked at him coolly.
"He knew that you'd let me down."
She was silent. Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden a suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.
"He made that threat only because he knew that you'd crumple up at it, Charlie. It's strange that he should have judged you so accurately. It was just like him to expose me to such a cruel disillusion."
Charlie looked down at the sheet of blotting paper in front of him. He was frowning a little and his mouth was sulky. But he did not reply.