“You must be out of your mind!” says Maurice, springing to his feet, and to poor Margaret’s abject fear speaking at the top of his lungs. “With her, when she deliberately deserted me of her own accord—when——”
“Oh, hush, hush!” says Margaret in an agony. She makes wild signs to him, pointing towards the closed doors as she does so. A nice girl, we all know, would rather die than put her ear to a keyhole, even if by doing so she could save her neck from the scaffold; but the very best of girls might by chance be leaning against a door through the chinks of which sounds might enter from the room beyond it. “She’ll hear you!” gasps Margaret.
“I don’t care if she does,” says Maurice indignantly, but he calms down for all that, and consents to sit in a chair as far from the folding-doors as possible. “You have misjudged me all through,” says he.
“I think not—I hope not. But I will say, Maurice, that I think you began your marriage badly, and—you should not have——”
“Have what?”
“Asked Marian to stay with you.”
“That was”—gloomily—“a mistake. I admit that. But have I nothing to complain of?”
“Nothing, I honestly believe.”
Her tone is so honest (Margaret herself is so sweetly honest all through) that he remains silent for a moment. It is, however, a constrained silence. The knowledge that Tita is standing or sitting, laughing or frowning, behind those boards over there, disturbs him in spite of himself.
“Well, I have often thought that, too,” says he, “and yet I have often thought—the other thing. At all events, you cannot deny that he was in love with her.”
“Why should I deny that? To me”—with a reproachful glance at him—“she seems like one with whom many might be in love.”
“Oh, you are a partisan!” says he irritably, rising abruptly, and preparing to pace the room.
Margaret catches his coat as he goes by her.
“I entreat, I implore you to be quiet. It is so slight a partition,” says she. “Do sit down like a dear boy and talk softly, unless”—wistfully and evidently hopefully—“you want to go away.”
“Well, I don’t,” says he grimly.
He reseats himself. An extraordinary fascination keeps him in this room, even in face of the fact that the mistress of it is plainly longing for his departure. She has even openly hinted at it. And the fascination? It lies there behind the folding-doors. There is no romance in it, he tells himself; it is rather the feeling of an enemy who knows his foe to be close by. He turns to Margaret.
“Why did she refuse that money?”
“Why did you refuse hers?”
“Pshaw! You’re evading the question. To take half of her little pittance! I wonder you can even suggest the thing. It—it is almost an insult,” says he, reddening to his brows.
“I didn’t mean it,” says Margaret quickly, the more so that she thinks he is going to walk the room again. “Of course you could not have taken it.”