"I don't know--oh, I don't know!"

Chris cared nothing for her. His outburst this evening had been partly anger and partly outraged pride. His was a dog-in-the-manger affection; he did not want her himself, and yet he would allow n.o.body else to have her.

She got up presently and unlocked the door between their rooms, groping along the wall for the switch.

She looked round her husband's room with unhappy eyes, and something of the old tenderness flowed back into her heart.

She had loved him for so long, her life and his were so irrevocably bound up together. How could she take this step that would sever the tie once and for all?

She wandered round the room aimlessly, picking up little things of his, looking at them, and putting them down again, and all the time the same unanswerable questions were going on in her mind.

If she stayed with him what was there for her in the future? She could only see more disillusionment and tears and sorrow, and if she went with Feathers ... Marie laughed brokenly, the tears running down her cheeks. How could she go with Feathers when he had not asked her? And suddenly she remembered the look in his eyes as he said good-night to her an hour or two ago.

She had tried to believe that it was not farewell and renunciation that she had read in them, but she had known that it was. He was stronger than she--his heart might ache, but he would not dishonor his friend. He would walk away with a smile on his lips, and n.o.body would ever know what he suffered.

If she tried to break down his strength she was not worthy of his love, and suddenly Marie Celeste hid her face in her hands and broke into bitter crying, which yet brought tears of healing to her heart. She would be worthy of him--she would not be a coward, s.n.a.t.c.hing greedily at the one hope of happiness offered to her; she would go on, trying to be brave, trying to make the best of things.

She went back to her room, leaving the door ajar so that she could hear when Chris came in. He was very late--she heard the clock strike twelve, and then half-past, but still he did not come; and then--at twenty minutes past one she heard a taxi drive up to the door and voices on the path outside.

She pulled aside the blind and peered out, but it was too dark to distinguish anything. Then the cab drove away, and she heard the front door opening below and the sound of steps in the hall.

She crept out oh to the landing and looked over the banisters. She could see Chris, his hat pushed to the back of his head and the top of a cigar stuck jauntily into the corner of his mouth, laughing immoderately, and swaying a little on his heels, as he resisted the other man's attempt to help him off with his coat.

Marie had never seen anyone the worse for drink in her life. Miss Chester had always brought her up in the belief that no gentleman ever took too much to drink. She would have been horrified if anyone had told her that most men of her acquaintance had, at one time or another, been helped home to bed. She stood clutching at the banisters, her face white with horror.

She did not know the man who was with Chris, so she hardly glanced at him. Her feet seemed glued to the spot and her eyes never left her husband's face.

And this was the man of whom she had a moment ago cherished such tender thoughts of forgiveness; this was the man for whose sake she had made up her mind to forego her happiness.

Her overstrained nerves exaggerated the whole thing painfully. She fled back to her room and locked and bolted the door.

She heard Chris come upstairs and heard him walking unsteadily about the room, and after a long time she heard him click out the light. Everything was silent then, but Marie Celeste lay awake till dawn, her brown eyes wide with horror.

She had kept her idol on its pedestal with difficulty for some time now, but to-night it had fallen ...

Chris was down late for breakfast the next morning; but he looked quite fresh and brisk as she met him in the hall.

"You had better ring for more coffee," she said. "I am afraid it is cold; you are late."

"I know; I was late home last night."

She did not say that she had heard and seen him and went on without answering. Presently he sought her out. His blue eyes were anxious, and he looked very boyish and nervous.

"Well, Marie, what is it to be?"

Marie was writing a letter in the drawing-room and she laid the pen down and turned in her chair.

Perhaps he read the answer in her face, for he took a quick protesting step forward. "Marie--you're not ..."

She stood up, her hand on the chair between them.

"I've been thinking it over, Chris, and--and I can't go away with you to-day."

Their eyes met steadily for a moment, and she saw his lips quiver as if she had hurt him, but Chris knew how to take a hard blow. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Very well--I know I've only myself to blame."

He turned to the door, but she called him back.

"There's something else, Chris."

"Well?"

But now she could not meet his eyes, and her voice was almost a whisper as she said:

"I wanted to ask you--it's ... it's so hopeless going on like this. You are not any more happy than I am ... Couldn't we--isn't there some way of ... of both of us getting our freedom again?"

She did not dare to look at him as she spoke. Her heart was beating furiously; there was a little hammering pulse in her throat that almost choked her. Then Chris covered the distance between them in a single stride and took her roughly by the shoulders.

"How dare you--how dare you say such a thing to me?" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Good G.o.d! don't you think I've got any--any feeling? Do you think I'm such a blackguard as to--to listen to such a thing for one moment? You must be mad!"

"I'm not--and you know I'm not. I'm tired--sick to death of living like this." Her voice rose excitedly. "Why, we may have to be together for years and years--twenty years, if we don't try and get free!" Her brown eyes were feverish. "You hate it as much as I do.

Oh, surely it can be arranged if we try very hard!"

Chris was as white as death. This was the worst shock he had ever had in his life, and, coming from Marie Celeste of all people, it left him stunned and speechless.

Until his return from Scotland he had been quite happy and contented, but since that first evening when she had so coldly repulsed him there had been a restlessness in his heart, a miserable sort of feeling that he could settle to nothing--a consciousness that things were all wrong and that he had not the power to put them right.

And the discovery that he had only himself to thank for it all did not help him in the least. In his blindness he tried every way but the right way to get back to his old contentment.

Marie was in love with love, not with Feathers, but, being a man, Chris could not tell this. He only saw the thing that lay immediately beneath his notice, and it told him that his wife had given her love to his friend.

He had no more idea than the dead what was going to happen, but, with his bulldog obstinacy, he knew he had no intention of allowing her to go free.

He cared nothing for scandal, though he pretended to. He hardly considered Feathers at all in the case. The one thing that racked him was the knowledge that he was in danger of losing something that had all at once become very precious.

His lips twitched badly when he tried to speak. He felt as if he were fighting in the dark--as if there were some unseen foe pitting its strength against him that would not come out into honest daylight.

Marie stood twisting her handkerchief childishly, her head downbent, and yet she had never looked less of a child in his eyes.

The little girl he had known all his life seemed suddenly to have disappeared, leaving in her place a woman who looked at him with the eyes of Marie Celeste, but without the shy admiration to which he had grown so accustomed that he never thought about it at all.

A great longing came to him to take her into his arms and tell her that she was talking nonsense, to kiss the strained look away from her face and the severe line of her pretty mouth into smiles, to tell her that they were going to begin all over again and be happy-- that the last weeks had been just a bad dream from which he had awakened, but his pride and some new dignity about her prevented him.

This was not the Marie Celeste he had known. She had escaped him while he had been looking away from her for his happiness.

After a moment he asked stiffly:

"Supposing--supposing it were possible--to do as you say--for each to get our freedom again ... what would you do?"