Hera had risen from the table; it was his first open blow, and she met it standing. A deep flush of colour dyed her temples, but she compressed her lips resolutely, obedient to an instinct which forbade her to quarrel with him, as it would have forbidden her to bandy words with the domestic who appeared just then with the cordial and glasses. She moved to the open window and stood with her back to him. Before her lay the garden with its stately white urns, the rich foliage of the trees, and beyond the wall the moonlit roofs of the workers’ homes, all touched with the mystery of the night, and Hera, looking out upon the picture, endeavoured to think clearly; she tried to pacify her warring emotions, to detach right from wrong, to stand them far apart, and with the eye of justice survey each in its naked proportions. As to what might be the whole meaning of the suspicions he had expressed she gave no thought; she contemplated only the cause of the angry spirit that was roused in him, and of which she saw herself the author; and for this her conscience adjudged her guilty. “The fault is mine,” she said, at length, turning toward him, sadness in her face. “I have done you a great wrong. By reason of it I am suffering more than you can know. I ought never to have become your wife.” “Still, it is a wrong that you may redress,” he returned, more gently, as he paused in his measured pacing of the room. “No; it is impossible,” she avowed, painfully. “It is your plain obligation to do so,” he asserted, his manner harsh again. “What right have you to accept all that your husband bestows and give nothing in return?” She answered him slowly, measuring every word: “The wrong I did you was in yielding to your solicitations--in allowing you to persuade me to marry you. I should have been stronger. For the rest, I am giving you all that I promised. Can you deny this?” He did not answer the question. Instead, he swept her with a contemptuous glance. “I perceive that with all this pretty show of remorse,” he said, “you are determined to keep up your defiance of me.” “Indeed, I am acting in no spirit of defiance,” she replied. “You must believe that. I tell you that, in the circumstances, I should deem myself on a plane with the women of the Galleria if I became to you what you wish.” She turned again to the window, and his coarse laugh sounded in her ears. “You would have me believe,” she heard him sneering, as he drew nearer to her, “that you are living up to some poetic ideal. At the outset I was fool enough to swallow that fiction. I thought that you were merely carrying idealism to the verge of absurdity, and at that point you would come to your senses and turn back. I credited my wife with being honest, you see.” “Will you spare me these insinuations?” she said. “I beg of you to speak out.”