He did not take her hand, but was staring at her now, incredulously.

“You mean you are actually going?” he exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“But—­what shall I say to Mr. Wing?  What will he think?”

Despite the ache in her heart, she smiled.

“Does it make any difference what Mr. Wing thinks?” she asked gently.  “Need he know?  Isn’t this a matter which concerns us alone?  I shall go off, and after a certain time people will understand that I am not coming back.”

“But—­have you considered that it may interfere with my prospects?” he asked.

“Why should it?  You are invaluable to Mr. Wing.  He can’t afford to dispense with your services just because you will be divorced.  That would be ridiculous.  Some of his own associates are divorced.”

“Divorced!” he cried, and she saw that he had grown pasty white.  “On what grounds?  Have you been—­”

He did not finish.

“No,” she said, “you need fear no scandal.  There will be nothing in any way harmful to your—­prospects.”

“What can I do?” he said, though more to himself than to her.  Her quick ear detected in his voice a note of relief.  And yet, he struck in her, standing helplessly smoking in the middle of the floor, chords of pity.

“You can do nothing, Howard,” she said.  “If you lived with me from now to the millennium you couldn’t make me love you, nor could you love me—­the way I must be loved.  Try to realize it.  The wrench is what you dread.  After it is over you will be much more contented, much happier, than you have been with me.  Believe me.”

His next remark astonished her.

“What’s the use of being so damned precipitate?” he demanded.

“Precipitate!”

“Because I can stand it no longer.  I should go mad,” she answered.

He took a turn up and down the room, stopped suddenly, and stared at her with eyes that had grown smaller.  Suspicion is slow to seize the complacent.  Was it possible that he had been supplanted?

Honora, with an instinct of what was coming, held up her head.  Had he been angry, had he been a man, how much humiliation he would have spared her!

“So you’re in love!” he said.  “I might have known that something was at the bottom of this.”

She took account of and quivered at the many meanings behind his speech —­meanings which he was too cowardly to voice in words.

“Yes,” she answered, “I am in love—­in love as I never hoped to be—­as I did not think it possible to be.  My love is such that I would go through hell fire for the sake of it.  I do not expect you to believe me when I tell you that such is not the reason why I am leaving you.  If you had loved me with the least spark of passion, if I thought I were in the least bit needful to you as a woman and as a soul, as a helper and a confidante, instead of a mere puppet to advertise your prosperity, this would not—­could not—­have happened.  I love a man who would give up the world for me to-morrow.  I have but one life to live, and I am going to find happiness if I can.”