“Anything bitter—­as long as you control your voice and features.  Try to smile at me when you speak, Philip.”

“All right.  I have no reason to be bitter, anyway,” he said; “and every reason to be otherwise.”

“That is not true.  You tell me that I have ruined your career in the army.  I did not know I was doing it.  Can you believe me?”

And, as he made no response:  “I did not dream you would have to resign.  Do you believe me?”

“There is no choice,” he said coldly.  “Drop the subject!”

“That is brutal.  I never thought—­” She forced a smile and drew her glass toward her.  The straw-tinted wine slopped over and frothed on the white skin of her arm.

“Well,” she breathed, “this ghastly dinner is nearly ended.”

He nodded pleasantly.

“And—­Phil?”—­a bit tremulous.

“What?”

“Was it all my fault?  I mean in the beginning?  I’ve wanted to ask you that—­to know your view of it.  Was it?”

“No.  It was mine, most of it.”

“Not all—­not half!  We did not know how; that is the wretched explanation of it all.”

“And we could never have learned; that’s the rest of the answer.  But the fault is not there.”

“I know; ‘better to bear the ills we have.’”

“Yes; more respectable to bear them.  Let us drop this in decency’s name, Alixe!”

After a silence, she began:  “One more thing—­I must know it; and I am going to ask you—­if I may.  Shall I?”

He smiled cordially, and she laughed as though confiding a delightful bit of news to him: 

“Do you regard me as sufficiently important to dislike me?”

“I do not—­dislike you.”

“Is it stronger than dislike, Phil?”

“Y-es.”

“Contempt?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“It is that—­I have not yet—­become—­reconciled.”

“To my—­folly?”

“To mine.”

She strove to laugh lightly, and failing, raised her glass to her lips again.

“Now you know,” he said, pitching his tones still lower.  “I am glad after all that we have had this plain understanding.  I have never felt unkindly toward you.  I can’t.  What you did I might have prevented had I known enough; but I cannot help it now; nor can you if you would.”

“If I would,” she repeated gaily—­for the people opposite were staring.

“We are done for,” he said, nodding carelessly to a servant to refill his glass; “and I abide by conditions because I choose to; not,” he added contemptuously, “because a complacent law has tethered you to—­to the thing that has crawled up on your knees to have its ears rubbed.”

The level insult to her husband stunned her; she sat there, upright, the white smile stamped on her stiffened lips, fingers tightening about the stem of her wine-glass.

He began to toss bread crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself in an ugly way. “I wish to punish you?  Why, Alixe, only look at him!—­Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp.  Little girl—­oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?—­for you have done nothing to me, child, that can match it in sheer atrocity!”