"For a woman of the world," he said, "you are more ignorant than I should have thought possible. Who are the women who are talked about at the clubs? Half a dozen names occur to you, as they do to me. Do you like being the seventh?" Again there was silence, broken first by a sullen roar of thunder, then by Marie's voice. "I want to ask you one question, Jack," she said. "Do you not know--you yourself--that to couple my name with that of any man except you, is to utter a foul and baseless calumny?" "That is not the point," said he. "The point is that your name has so been coupled." "Do you not know it?" she repeated. Again there was silence. The devil, probably, would have betted on Jack's saying "No." If so, he would have lost his money. "Yes, I know it," he replied; and his tattered flag of honour waved again. "Then, how dare you repeat such a thing to me?" said Marie, still in the same unnaturally even voice. "For you seem to forget one thing, Jack, and that is that I am your wife!" "It is exactly that which I remember," he said. "Then you are beyond me, and I cannot understand you at all. You seem to think--God knows what you think! Anyhow, the standard of honour which is yours is utterly incomprehensible to me. You approach me with a sort of calm gusto to tell me a canard you have picked out of the clubs or out of the gutter, and you seem to think I shall care! What I care about is something quite different, and that is that you should have told me. I suppose your object was to wound me, to punish me--so you put it to yourself, for my having disregarded your warning. It is true that you have wounded me, but not in the way you think. Not long ago you thought good to cast doubts on the way in which I told you I had spent my evening. This is one step worse. And I warn you that another step may take you too far! That is all I have to say." She turned round and, with a quick movement of her finger, turned on the electric light and stood in all her splendid beauty before him. Her bosom heaved with her intense suppressed emotion, her eye was kindled, and her mouth, slightly parted with her quickened breath, just showed the white line of her teeth. And sudden amazement at her loveliness seized the man. He looked long, then got up and advanced to her. "Marie, Marie!" he said with entreaty, and laid his hand on her arm. "Ah, don't touch me!" she cried. CHAPTER XI