“Yes, Amede,” she murmured after a while, “I owe you obedience, honor and love, and you need not fear that I will fail in either.  But you,” she added with pathetic anxiety, “you do care for me still? do you not?”

“Of course I care for you,” he remarked, “I worship you....  There! ... will that satisfy you? ...  And now?” he added peremptorily, “have you brought the money?”

The short interlude of passion was over.  His eye had accidentally rested for one second on the leather wallet, which she still held tightly clutched, and all thoughts of her beauty, of his power or his desires, had flown out to the winds.

“Yes,” she replied meekly, “it is all here, in the wallet.”

She laid it down upon the table, feeling neither anxiety nor remorse.  He was her husband and had a right to her fortune, as he had to her person and to her thoughts and heart an he wished.  Nor did she care about the money, as to the value of which she was, of course, ignorant.

Her wealth, up to now, had only had a meaning for her, as part of some noble scheme for the regeneration of mankind.  Now she hoped vaguely, as she put that wallet down on the table, then pushed it towards her husband, that she was purchasing her freedom with her wealth.

Certainly she realized that his thoughts had very quickly been diverted from her beauty to the contents of the wallet.  The mocking laugh died down on his lips, giving place to a sigh of deep satisfaction.

“You were very prudent, my dear Suzanne, to place this portion of your wealth in my charge,” he said as he slipped the bulky papers into the lining of his doublet.  “Of course it is all yours, and I—­your husband—­am but the repository and guardian of your fortune.  And now methinks ’twere prudent for you to return to the Court.  Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse will be missing you....”

It did not seem to strike her as strange that he should dismiss her thus abruptly, and make no attempt to explain what his future plans might be, nor indeed what his intentions were with regard to herself.

The intensity of her disappointment, the utter loneliness and helplessness of her position had caused a veritable numbing of her faculties and of her spirit and for the moment she was perhaps primarily conscious of a sense of relief at her dismissal.

Like her wedding in the dismal little church, this day of her birthday, of her independence, of her handing over her fortune to her husband for the glorious purposes of his selfless schemes had been so very, very different to what she had pictured to herself in her girlish and romantic dreams.

The sordidness of it all had ruthlessly struck her; for the first time in her intercourse with this man, she doubted the genuineness of his motives.  With the passing of her fortune from her hands to his, the last vestige of belief in him died down with appalling suddenness.

It could not have been because of the expression in his eyes, as he fingered the wallet, for this she could not see, since his face was still in shadow.  It must have been just instinct—­that, and the mockery of his attempt to make love to her.  Had he ever loved her, he could not have mocked ... not now, that she was helpless and entirely at his mercy.