A shudder ran through her slim frame as I spoke, and she lost her support and almost fell. With a sudden movement she pushed back the mass of dark curls from her forehead, her bright eyes gleamed with an earnest fire as they met mine, and she said, hysterically, “You are cruel—you do not know how I suffer, for your surmise is not correct in the smallest degree. You, my husband, I love, and no one else. And you accuse me. Mon Dieu!”
My self-control was very nearly exhausted. If she had been a man I might have struck her! As it was, I was powerless, and as I looked at her my eyes must have gleamed with fury.
“Last night proved the great extent of your love for me,” I exclaimed fiercely.
All that latent fire which exists in every woman’s nature, ready to burst into flame when her self-respect is wounded, was aglow in Vera as I uttered that retort.
“I cannot see that it did. I have done absolutely nothing of which I am ashamed,” was her answer.
She spoke with a cool, reckless candour that shocked me. My thoughts were soured by disappointment.
“What!” I cried, “have you no compunction?”
“I am sorry it was my ill-luck to be seen by you, and thus cause you unnecessary pain.”
“Oh, spare me your expressions of sorrow, pray,” I said, in a hard tone. “They are out of place.”
“I had thought to keep his presence a secret,” she continued in that dead-calm voice, which was like some one speaking in a dream.