"You cared!" she said in rapid scorn. "You loved! And now six months later you can come here calmly, brutally, cynically, and say, 'I came because I was curious.' You _cared_!" A blind animal fury swept over him. He caught her in his arms, murder and abject yielding wrestling in his soul. "Dodo!" She had swept aside all the artifices of the man of the world. The man beneath the veneer, rage or passion led, held her in a clasp that left its wounds upon her tender arms. Yet she did not move or cry out. He looked at her inertly thus, immobile as a statue and suddenly as though perceiving a strange woman, he released her roughly, amazed at himself. "Good God," he said, striking his forehead, "haven't you done me enough harm already!" She burst out weeping. He turned, stirred to a guilty responsibility, trying to bluster into the better reason. "Why did you bring me here?" She made no answer. "Dodo," he said angrily, wondering still at her motive with growing alarm, "I warn you; all is over between us. You yourself have done it. You belong to another!" She fell back in a chair, her sobs redoubling hysterically; a wild laugh suddenly breaking through. "I'm sorry--I'm awfully sorry," he said, stirred from his anger and his righteousness. "No, no," she said brokenly, "you've done nothing--nothing, but what I wished." "What!" he said in a voice of thunder. "I wanted you to forget yourself--to take me in your arms," she said almost incoherently. He could not believe his ears. Astounded, he seized her by the wrist, saying angrily: "You--you did this on purpose!" "I did, and oh, it is the worst, the most awful thing I've done in all my life--I know it, I know it! But I had to do it, yes, I had to. Oh, forgive me, Your Honor. I had no right but I had to know." "What do you mean?" he said, releasing her and staring at her to assure himself that she was in her right mind. She rose, the tears at an end, facing him calmly, even with a new sense of power, which struck profoundly into his masculine vanity. "I had to know that I was really free--that you had no more power over me--that I could go on with my life," she said simply. It was too monstrous, he could not credit it. "And you brought me here for that?" he said slowly. "Yes." "Good heavens," he cried, revolted and shocked, "you--you could do--such a thing, such an indefensible, outrageous thing as this. That is too much, I can not understand--" "I did it," she said quietly, "because I want to be a good wife." "Then it was not because you wished to get me back?" he cried, too amazed not to be indiscreet. "Why, no--of course not!" "It is incredible!" he said stupidly aghast at her candor.