“He has done me no injury,” said Olivia. “That’s what I want you to know. No injury in the ordinary sense of the word.”
She looked up at Myra’s impassive face, and met the dull blue eyes, and found it very difficult to tell her, in spite of lifelong intimacy. Yet it was right that Myra should have no false notions.
“I’ve discovered that my husband’s name is not Alexis Triona. It is John Briggs.”
“John Briggs,” echoed Myra.
“His father was a labourer in Newcastle. He was a chauffeur in Russia. All that he had said about himself and written in his book is untrue. When he left us last summer to go to Finland, he really went to Newcastle to his mother’s death-bed. Everything he has told me has been a lie from beginning to end. He—oh, God, Myra——”
She broke down and clutched her face, while her throat was choking with dry sobbing. Myra came swiftly round the table and put her arm about her, and drew the beloved head near to her thin body.
“There, there, my dear. You can tell me more another time.”
Olivia let herself be soothed for a while. Then she pulled herself together and rose.
“No, I’ll tell you everything now. Then we’ll never need talk of it again. I’m not going to make a fool of myself.”
She stiffened herself against feminine weakness. At the end of the story, Myra asked her: