He seemed not to hear her.  “I’m going away to-morrow,” he said, “but I’ll never divorce you, no matter what you do; and I won’t let you divorce me, either.  No, no!  Take him now, if you want him, but you’ll never be able to marry him until I’m gone.  And I won’t die soon—­I promise you that, I’m going to live.”

“You can’t go—­”

“There’s a boat to-morrow.”

“Don’t you see you must stay and explain to those men?  My God!  They’ll think you spoke the truth; they’ll believe what you said.”

“Of course they will,” he chattered, shrilly.  “That’s why I did it in that way.  No matter what you or he or I can do or say now, they’ll believe it forever.  It came to me like a flash of light, and I saw what it meant all in a minute.  Do you understand what it means, eh?  Listen!  No matter how you behave, they’ll know.  They won’t say anything, but they’ll know, and you can’t stand that, can you?  Even if you could fool me once more against the evidence of my own eyes and ears, and convince me that your lies are true, it wouldn’t do any good with them.”

“‘Evidence!’ You have no evidence.”

“No?  What about that night at Taboga?  You were mad over the fellow then, but you didn’t think I saw.  That day I caught you together in the jungle—­have you forgotten that?  Didn’t you think it strange that I should be the one to discover you?  Oh, I pretended to be blind, but I followed you everywhere I could, and I kept my eyes open.”

“You saw nothing, for there was nothing.”

“He’s been with you day and night.  You have been together constantly, and I knew what was going on.  But I waited, because I wasn’t strong enough to revolt—­until to-night.  Oh, but to-night I was strong!  Something gave me courage.”

In all their married life she had never known him to show such stubborn force.  He was like granite, and the unbelievable change in him, upsetting all her preconceived notions of the man, appalled her.  There had been times in the past when they had clashed, but he had never really matched his will with hers, and she had judged him weak and spiritless.  Now, therefore, failing to dominate him as usual, she was filled with a strange feeling of helplessness and terror.

“You had no right to accept such evidence,” she stormed.

“Bah!  Why try to fool me?  I have your own words for it.  The other afternoon I came home sick—­with my head.  I was on the gallery outside when you were pleading with him, and I heard it all.  You talked that night about Taboga, your guilty kisses and other things; you acknowledged everything.  But he was growing tired of you.  That, you know, makes it all the more effective.”  He smiled in an agonized fury.

“You—­cur!” she cried, with the fury of one beating barehanded at a barred door.  “You had no right to do such a thing even if I were guilty.”

“Right?  Aren’t you my wife?”