He paused, in his heart hoping she would give some sign that the words meant something to her, and that he might, even yet, catch some evidence that her love for him was not utterly dead.  During the pause which ensued, she turned her face away from him, and so he did not see the look almost of terror which it now wore.

Construing her silence into simple acquiescence, and thus angered the more, he went on in a hard voice:  “During the past two years the change in you, Grace, has been incomprehensible to me.  For my wishes you have not shown the slightest regard, while your home, as you know, has held no attractions for you—­possibly because I am in it.  You have persisted in going out alone to the opera, to parties and social attractions of a like nature, until you have almost become talked about.”  His voice grew more bitter as he continued to recall the past.  “Had you been a plain woman you would likely have found some attractions at your home; but the love of adulation and the greed of excitement and false flattery seem now to be so necessary to you that your true womanliness has been killed.”

He was now pacing the floor in deep agitation.

A transformation had crept over his wife’s face.  Her cheeks were no longer pale, but flushed with anger, while her head was thrown back defiantly and her hands tightly clenched.

“And has my lord finished the list of his wife’s accomplishments?” she asked, smothering her anger by a strong effort, and speaking as though in jest.

Quietly walking over to where she was sitting, he said, in a tense voice:  “No, not quite.  The bitterest memory I have of my wife is her heartless conduct toward the memory of our poor dead boy.  When he was alive I really believed that you loved him passionately; but scarcely had he been dead a year when this greed for gaiety and excitement took possession of you, and you began to go out everywhere.  You knew he was dearer to me than life, and that his memory was with me every hour of the day.  How little true sentiment, after all, there must have been in your professed idolization of him.  With such a mother it is perhaps well that he is dead!” His voice broke for a moment as memories of the boy he had so idolized crowded back upon him.  Looking into her now flashing eyes he continued bitterly:  “I am weary of the bitter scenes between us, and of your heartlessness, Grace, and we must part.  I shall leave the house to-night and live my life elsewhere.  You can stay here and enjoy the frivolity which is dearer to you than your husband, the memory of your dead boy, or—­”

“You are a coward, Harold Townsley!” As she faced him, her head thrown back, her opera cloak lying in artistic disorder at her feet, exposing the richly trimmed dress, and the soft outlines of her fine figure, her eyes flashing and her bosom rapidly heaving, she looked, indeed, ready to do and dare anything.