Her reply stung him deeply.  With tightening lips he turned away, and muttered under his breath, “I am, indeed, right!  She has not the slightest love left for me; it will delight her to be free.”

“Grace,” he said, a little sadly—­but, unfortunately, also again sternly—­as he halted by her side, “You and I, like so many others, evidently were not intended for each other.”

Her clasped hands tightened, but he did not notice it; he was sure that he thoroughly understood her now.

“It is a pity,” he went on, grimly, with his eyes fixed on the carpet, “that human nature is not gifted with the faculty of reading the future; so many mistakes and so much suffering would be prevented.”  He was thinking more of the unhappy days she must have spent with him, during the past two years, than of his own disappointment in her.  But she did not understand the words in this way, and thinking he wanted her to know what a terrible mistake he had made when he married her, five years ago, her high-strung, nervous temperament was aroused still more, and rising quickly, she said, almost recklessly: 

“I never knew before, Harold, that you were such a humanitarian and had such lofty longings to save others suffering; indeed, were you not evidently so much in earnest, I should certainly think that you were indulging in jests.”  Somehow her low laugh, this time, hardly rang true.

The cynical reply caused her husband’s figure to straighten out stiffly—­they both were now at dangerous cross purposes.

Meeting his gaze, she went on crisply:  “And was it for the sake of expatiating on the general failure of marriage that you commanded me to meet you here before I could go out?” Without waiting for a reply, she drew out her gold watch, and after glancing at it, said carelessly, “I am afraid I shall not be able to listen to all the pros and cons of this vast question to-night, as I have, as you are aware, to be at the opera in a half-hour or so.”

His face now lit up angrily, as he rejoined hotly, “Yes, it was to discuss this vast question that I wanted to see you alone; but not to discuss it in the abstract, as you evidently think, but as it concerns you and me, and to try to remedy, as far as possible, the mistake you evidently must have made when you thought you loved and married me.”

As he ceased and turned away toward the piano, she almost sank on the chair at her side.  “Where are we drifting?” she whispered; “surely it has not come to this between Harold and me!” His back was turned to her, and he was fingering the music restlessly, trying to get command of himself for what he had to say.

Turning, he leaned against the piano, and fixing his eyes on the comely head with its rich brown covering, he said firmly, but not without some emotion, “We have drifted, and drifted so, Grace, that there is nothing else left—­we must part.”

Her breath came quickly, but there was no other sign that she was agitated.