“Phil, I beg of you!” Helen cried, beseechingly. “You must not say such things. I am not strong enough to stop you, and every word adds to the pain.”
“Then there is pain!” cried Emory, fiercely. “At last I know it from your own lips. And if there is pain it gives me the right to protect you from it.”
“Oh, Phil!” Helen sank helplessly into a chair.
“I have the right,” Emory repeated. “My love, which you cast aside when you accepted him, now gives it to me; my loyalty in surrendering you to him for what I thought was your happiness now gives it to me; his selfishness and his neglect now give it to me. And I claim my right.”
She made no reply. Convulsed with weeping, she sat huddled in the chair, helpless in her sorrow.
“I am going to Jack Armstrong now,” continued Emory, savagely. “I am going to tell him what a brute he is and demand you of him. I did not give you up to be tortured by neglect while he devotes himself to his ‘affinity.’” Emory’s voice grew bitter. “And he calls it his ‘masterpiece’! Better men than he have called it by another name.”
Helen rose, white and ghostlike in the pale, dim light. She was calm again, and her voice was compelling in its quiet force.
“You have been my friend, Phil—a friend on whom I have felt I could rely always; yet you take this one moment, when I need real, honest friendship more than ever before in all my life, to add another burden. Is it kind, Phil—is it noble? I have suffered—I admit it. Jack is the cause of it—I admit that, too. You have discovered all this by pulling aside the veil which by my friend should have been held sacred; but with my heart laid bare before you, can you not see that it contains no thought except of him?”
“I do not believe it,” Emory replied, stubbornly.
“You must believe it,” she continued, with finality. “You know that my words are true. Jack Armstrong is my husband and I am his wife. We must forget what you have said and never refer to it again. Come, let us join them in the house.”