“Look here, Mary,” he said.  “I came for an explanation and I intend to have one.  Your father may give this affair what gloss he pleases, but you must know as well as I do what rumour and report are saying, so we might as well speak plainly.  Is it the fact that the doctor has made certain statements about your own condition, and that your father is giving this entertainment because . . . well, because he is expecting an heir?”

To my husband’s astonishment I answered: 

“Yes.”

“So you admit it?  Then perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me how that condition came about?”

Knowing he needed no explanation, I made no answer.

“Can’t you speak?” he said.

But still I remained silent.

“You know what our relations have been since our marriage, so I ask you again how does that condition come about?”

I was now trembling more than ever, but a kind of forced courage came to me and I said: 

“Why do you ask?  You seem to know already.”

“I know what anonymous letters have told me, if that’s what you mean.  But I’m your husband and have a right to know from you.  How does your condition come about, I ask you?”

I cannot say what impulse moved me at that moment unless it was the desire to make a clean breast and an end of everything, but, stepping to my desk, I took out of a drawer the letter which Price had intercepted and threw it on the table.

He took it up and read it, with the air of one to whom the contents were not news, and then asked how I came by it.

“It was taken out of the hands of a woman who was in the act of posting it,” I said.  “She confessed that it was one of a number of such letters which had been inspired, if not written, by your friend Alma.”

“My friend Alma!”

“Yes, your friend Alma.”

His face assumed a frightful expression and he said: 

“So that’s how it is to be, is it?  In spite of the admission you have just made you wish to imply that this” (holding out the letter) “is a trumped-up affair, and that Alma is at the bottom of it.  You’re going to brazen it out, are you, and shelter your condition under your position as a married woman?”

I was so taken by surprise by this infamous suggestion that I could not speak to deny it, and my husband went on to say: 

“But it doesn’t matter a rush to me who is at the bottom of the accusation contained in this letter.  There’s only one thing of any consequence—­is it true?”

My head was reeling, my eyes were dim, my palms were moist, I felt as if I were throwing myself over a precipice but I answered: 

“It is perfectly true.”

I think that was the last thing he expected.  After a moment he said: 

“Then you have broken your marriage vows—­is that it?”

“Yes, if you call it so.”

“Call it so?  Call it so?  Good heavens, what do you call it?”