She hesitated, still caught in the hopeless difficulty of finding words. "It's because … I suddenly see that we feel too differently about things, and I want to have time to think … to go away and think by myself… ."

Tarrant's lips narrowed, and his cold eyes seemed to draw closer together. "If you mean that we feel differently about lending Vance Weston money, we certainly do. I rather wonder, though, that you should pick that out as a grievance. I should have thought you might have remembered that as a rule I'm not backward about lending money."

There was a long pause. Halo leaned against the chair from which she had risen, and the eyes resting on her husband filled with tears. Her resentment had died at the very moment when he had found the taunt most calculated to quicken it. She would have given the world if he had not said those particular words, because they laid bare to her the corner of his mind where old grudges and rancours were stored, the corner into which she had always refused to look. But now that the words were spoken she felt only pity for him—and for herself. It seemed to her that he and she merited equally such humiliation as the moment involved. "Oh, Lewis," she began, "please don't… ."

"I don't want to—all I want is to make myself clear."

"You have," she murmured. She straightened herself and took a step back. He still leaned in the door and looked at her.

"All right," he said, again with his thin laugh. "Then we may call the matter settled?"

She made no answer, and after waiting a moment he went out of the room. When the door had closed she sat down and leaned back in her chair with closed eyes.