She met this with a silence that seemed to rob the taunt of half its efficacy.
“Is that what you imply?” he pressed her.
“No,” she answered with sudden directness. “I noticed some time ago that you seemed to dislike him, but since then—”
“Well—since then?”
“I’ve imagined that you had reasons for still wishing me to be civil to him, as you call it.”
“Ah,” said Glennard, with an effort at lightness; but his irony dropped, for something in her voice made him feel that he and she stood at last in that naked desert of apprehension where meaning skulks vainly behind speech.
“And why did you imagine this?” The blood mounted to his forehead. “Because he told you that I was under obligations to him?”
She turned pale. “Under obligations?”
“Oh, don’t let’s beat about the bush. Didn’t he tell you it was I who published Mrs. Aubyn’s letters? Answer me that.”
“No,” she said; and after a moment which seemed given to the weighing of alternatives, she added: “No one told me.”
“You didn’t know then?”
She seemed to speak with an effort. “Not until—not until—”
“Till I gave you those papers to sort?”
Her head sank.
“You understood then?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her immovable face. “Had you suspected—before?” was slowly wrung from him.
“At times—yes—” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Why? From anything that was said—?”
There was a shade of pity in her glance. “No one said anything—no one told me anything.” She looked away from him. “It was your manner—”
“My manner?”
“Whenever the book was mentioned. Things you said—once or twice—your irritation—I can’t explain—”
Glennard, unconsciously, had moved nearer. He breathed like a man who has been running. “You knew, then, you knew”—he stammered. The avowal of her love for Flamel would have hurt him less, would have rendered her less remote. “You knew—you knew—” he repeated; and suddenly his anguish gathered voice. “My God!” he cried, “you suspected it first, you say—and then you knew it—this damnable, this accursed thing; you knew it months ago—it’s months since I put that paper in your way—and yet you’ve done nothing, you’ve said nothing, you’ve made no sign, you’ve lived alongside of me as if it had made no difference—no difference in either of our lives. What are you made of, I wonder? Don’t you see the hideous ignominy of it? Don’t you see how you’ve shared in my disgrace? Or haven’t you any sense of shame?”
He preserved sufficient lucidity, as the words poured from him, to see how fatally they invited her derision; but something told him they had both passed beyond the phase of obvious retaliations, and that if any chord in her responded it would not be that of scorn.
He was right. She rose slowly and moved toward him.
“Haven’t you had enough—without that?” she said, in a strange voice of pity.
He stared at her. “Enough—?”
“Of misery….”
An iron band seemed loosened from his temples. “You saw then…?” he whispered.
“Oh, God–-oh, God–-” she sobbed. She dropped beside him and hid her anguish against his knees. They clung thus in silence, a long time, driven together down the same fierce blast of shame.
When at length she lifted her face he averted his. Her scorn would have hurt him less than the tears on his hands.
She spoke languidly, like a child emerging from a passion of weeping. “It was for the money—?”
His lips shaped an assent.
“That was the inheritance—that we married on?”
“Yes.”
She drew back and rose to her feet. He sat watching her as she wandered away from him.
“You hate me,” broke from him.
She made no answer.
“Say you hate me!” he persisted.
“That would have been so simple,” she answered with a strange smile. She dropped into a chair near the writing-table and rested a bowed forehead on her hand.
“Was it much—?” she began at length.
“Much—?” he returned, vaguely.
“The money.”
“The money?” That part of it seemed to count so little that for a moment he did not follow her thought.
“It must be paid back,” she insisted. “Can you do it?”
“Oh, yes,” he returned, listlessly. “I can do it.”
“I would make any sacrifice for that!” she urged.
He nodded. “Of course.” He sat staring at her in dry-eyed self-contempt. “Do you count on its making much difference?”
“Much difference?”
“In the way I feel—or you feel about me?”
She shook her head.
“It’s the least part of it,” he groaned.
“It’s the only part we can repair.”
“Good heavens! If there were any reparation—” He rose quickly and crossed the space that divided them. “Why did you never speak?” he asked.
“Haven’t you answered that yourself?”
“Answered it?”
“Just now—when you told me you did it for me.” She paused a moment and then went on with a deepening note—“I would have spoken if I could have helped you.”
“But you must have despised me.”
“I’ve told you that would have been simpler.”
“But how could you go on like this—hating the money?”
“I knew you would speak in time. I wanted you, first, to hate it as I did.”
He gazed at her with a kind of awe. “You’re wonderful,” he murmured. “But you don’t yet know the depths I’ve reached.”
She raised an entreating hand. “I don’t want to!”
“You’re afraid, then, that you’ll hate me?”
“No—but that you’ll hate ME. Let me understand without your telling me.”
“You can’t. It’s too base. I thought you didn’t care because you loved Flamel.”
She blushed deeply. “Don’t—don’t—” she warned him.
“I haven’t the right to, you mean?”
“I mean that you’ll be sorry.”
He stood imploringly before her. “I want to say something worse—something more outrageous. If you don’t understand THIS you’ll be perfectly justified in ordering me out of the house.”
She answered him with a glance of divination. “I shall understand—but you’ll be sorry.”
“I must take my chance of that.” He moved away and tossed the books about the table. Then he swung round and faced her. “Does Flamel care for you?” he asked.
Her flush deepened, but she still looked at him without anger. “What would be the use?” she said with a note of sadness.
“Ah, I didn’t ask THAT,” he penitently murmured.
“Well, then—”
To this adjuration he made no response beyond that of gazing at her with an eye which seemed now to view her as a mere factor in an immense redistribution of meanings.
“I insulted Flamel to-day. I let him see that I suspected him of having told you. I hated him because he knew about the letters.”
He caught the spreading horror of her eyes, and for an instant he had to grapple with the new temptation they lit up. Then he said, with an effort—“Don’t blame him—he’s impeccable. He helped me to get them published; but I lied to him too; I pretended they were written to another man… a man who was dead….”
She raised her arms in a gesture that seemed to ward off his blows.
“You DO despise me!” he insisted.
“Ah, that poor woman—that poor woman—” he heard her murmur.
“I spare no one, you see!” he triumphed over her. She kept her face hidden.
“You do hate me, you do despise me!” he strangely exulted.
“Be silent!” she commanded him; but he seemed no longer conscious of any check on his gathering purpose.