“If you had killed him,” she replied, “he deserved it!”

“He was an insulting beast, of course,” Maraton continued.  “After all, though, one mustn’t bring oneself down to the level of these creatures.  He saw with his eyes, and what is seen from that point of view isn’t of any account.  Perhaps it isn’t his fault that he hasn’t learnt to govern himself.  If I were you, Julia, I wouldn’t bother about it any more, really.”

“It wasn’t altogether what he said,” she whispered.  “It wasn’t altogether that.”

He looked at her enquiringly.

“You mean?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me?” he begged.

Once more he saw that little quiver pass through her frame.  Her lips were parted and closed again.  Maraton was puzzled, but did his best to follow her line of thought.

“The only way to treat such a person,” he continued, “is to treat him as a lunatic.  That is what he really is.  I scarcely heard what he said; already I have forgotten every word.”

“But I can’t!  I never can!”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“My dear Julia,” he protested, “I appeal to your common sense!”

She looked at him almost angrily.  Her foot beat upon the floor.

“What has common sense to do with it!” she exclaimed.  “Of course, it was a foolish thing to say.  He didn’t even believe it—­I am sure of that.  It was simply mad, insensate jealousy; a vicious attempt to make me suffer.  That isn’t where he hurt.  It was because—­shall I tell you?”

A sudden instinct warned him.  He held out his hand.

“It will only distress you.  No, I don’t want to hear.”

The momentary silence seemed endowed with peculiar qualities.  They heard the little clock ticking upon the mantelpiece, the tinkle of a hansom bell outside, the muffled sound of motor horns in the distance.  Very slowly her head drooped back once more to the shelter of her hands.

“You don’t understand,” she said simply.  “Why should you?  I wasn’t even angry—­that is the terrible part of it.  I wished—­I found myself wishing—­that it were true!”

Maraton’s hands suddenly gripped the edge of the table against which he was leaning.  Her face was still concealed; once more her long, slim body was shaken with quivering sobs.

“The shame of it!” she moaned.  “That is where he hurt.  The shame of hearing it and knowing it wasn’t true and of wanting it to be true!  I haven’t ever thought of any one like that—­he knows that well enough.  He used to call me sexless.  There isn’t any man in the world has ever dared to touch my lips—­he knows it.”

Maraton left his place and quietly approached her.  She heard him coming, and the trembling gradually ceased.  He sat on the arm of her chair, and his hand rested gently upon her shoulder.

“Dear Julia,” he said, “I am glad that you have been honest.  Life is always full of these emotions, you know, especially for highly-strung people, and sometimes the atmosphere gets a little overcharged and they blaze out as they have done this evening, and perhaps one is the better for it.”