His hand grasped her wrist, though not with violence. She rose, unsteadily, and shook the grasp off. "Oh, Herbert," she said, "I never saw you like this before! Let us think of what we can do in case all _is_ really lost." He withdrew from her, breaking into a hollow laugh. He stared at her with dilated, accusing eyes. "You don't dare tell me. But I read it, as I read it yesterday.... What can we do? Ah! you're not the woman to live on a thousand or two a year. You want fine things to wear and to eat. You want your jewels, too--don't sell them, for you couldn't get along without them, now." He kept silence for a moment, and then hurried with swift steps toward the door, again pausing. A kind of madness, that was born of an agony, possessed him and visibly showed its sway. "Get some one else to put you back into luxury," he went on, lifting one hand toward his throat, as though to make the words less husky that were leaping from his lips. "Get Goldwin to do it. Yes, Goldwin. You've only to nod and he'll kneel to you--as I knelt. Perhaps he's got from you what I never could get. You know what I mean--I've told you." He passed at once from the room, flinging the door shut behind him. The room was in dimness by this time. Claire almost staggered to a lounge, and sank within it. His wild insult had dizzied her. He had not meant a word of it. He was tortured by the thought that she had never cared for him. He had used the first fierce reproach that his sorrow and exasperation could hit upon. He went to his own apartments, dressed, and then left the house. He forgot that he had not dined, but remembered only that there might be some sort of forlorn financial hope discovered by a certain assemblage of men less deeply involved than himself, yet all sufferers in a similar way, which would take place privately that same evening at a popular hotel not far distant. All recollection of having suggested an infidelity to Claire quite escaped from his perturbed and over-wrought brain. The piercing realization that she had never loved him still continued its torment. But he failed to recall that the desperate sarcasm of his mood had ever hurled at her the name of Goldwin. A knock at the door of the darkened room waked Claire from a kind of stupor. The knock came from her maid, and it acted with decisive arousing force. Lights were soon lit, and dinner, that evening, was ordered to become a canceled ceremony. "You may bring me some _bouillon_, Marie," Claire directed. "That, and nothing else." She drank the beverage when it was brought, and changed her dress. The glass showed her a pale but tranquil face. 'I would have clung to him if he would have let me,' incessantly passed through her thoughts. 'But now he tells me that another can give me the luxury that I have lost. He is right. Goldwin will come this evening; I am sure of it.'