“Why?  What a question!  Love—­”

“I doubt if it is any longer a question of love between you and me.”

These words, which so exactly embodied her own idea, came to her as a shock, a brutal blow from him.

“Vincent!” she cried protestingly.

“I don’t know what it is that has your attention now, what private anxieties that I am not privileged to share—­”

“You have been ill.”

“But not imbecile.  Do you suppose I’ve missed one tone of your voice, or haven’t understood what has been going on in your mind?  Have you lived with me five years and think me a forgiving man—­”

“May I ask what you have to forgive?”

“Do you suppose a pat to my pillow or an occasional kind word takes the place to me of what our relation used to be?”

“You speak as if our relation was over.”

“Have you been imagining I was going to come whining to you for a return of your love and respect?  What nonsense!  Love makes love, and indifference makes indifference.”

“You expect me to say I am indifferent to you?”

“I care very little what you say.  I judge your conduct.”

She had an unerring instinct for what would wound him.  If she had answered with conviction, “Yes, I am indifferent to you,” there would have been enough temper and exaggeration in it for him to discount the whole statement.  But to say, “No, I still love you, Vincent,” in a tone that conceded the very utmost that she could,—­namely, that she still loved him for the old, rather pitiful association,—­that would be to inflict the most painful wound possible.  And so that was what she said.  She was prepared to have him take it up and cry:  “You still love me?  Do you mean as you love your Aunt Alberta?” and she, still trying to be just, would answer:  “Oh, more than Aunt Alberta.  Only, of course—­”

The trouble was he did not make the right answer.  When she said, “No, I still love you, Vincent,” he answered: 

“I cannot say the same.”

It was one of those replies that change the face of the world.  It drove every other idea out of her head.  She stared at him for an instant.

“Nobody,” she answered, “need tell me such a thing as that twice.”  It was a fine phrase to cover a retreat; she left him and went to her own room.  It no more occurred to her to ask whether he meant what he said than if she had been struck in the head she would have inquired if the blow was real.

She did not come down to lunch.  Vincent and Mathilde ate alone.  Mathilde, as she told Pete, had begun to understand her stepfather, but she had not progressed so far as to see in his silence anything but an unapproachable sternness.  It never crossed her mind that this middle-aged man, who seemed to control his life so completely, was suffering far more than she, and she was suffering a good deal.