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.”