“Are you in your right senses, Yvonne? Do you understand what I asked you? Your first husband is still alive and you saw him to-day?”
“Yes,” said Yvonne again. “Didn’t you know when you came in?”
“I did n’t know,” he repeated almost mechanically.
The blow crushed him for a while. He stood quite rigid, drawing quick breaths, with his eyes fixed upon her. And she remained still, half-sitting on the edge of the bed, numb with a vague prescience of catastrophe, and a dim, uncomprehended intuition of the earthquake and wreck in the man’s soul. The silence grew appalling. She broke it with a faltering whisper.
“Will you forgive me?”
The poor little commonplace fell in the midst of devastating emotions—pathetically incongruous.
“Did you know that this man was alive when you married me?” he asked in a hard voice.
“No,” cried Yvonne. “How could I have married you? I thought he had been dead nearly three years.”
“What proofs did you have of his death?”
“A friend sent me a number of the Figaro, with the announcement.”