The Avalanche

There was silence for a moment and then Price said awkwardly:  “It is a pity you haven’t the chain or you could wear the ruby for the rest of the evening.”

She turned her eyes from the window and stared at him.  “I have the chain—­” She raised her hand to the tip of her bodice—­“but—­but—­you can’t mean—­it isn’t possible that you can forgive me.”

“I think I have taken very bad care of you.  What are you, after all, but a brilliant child?  I am thirty-three—­”

He suddenly tore off his domino with, a feeling of rage, and thrust his hands into his friendly pockets.  He had never made many verbal protestations to her, although the most exacting wife could have found no fault with his love-making.  But to-night he felt dumb; he was mortally afraid of appearing high and noble and magnanimous.

“You see, things always happen during the first years of married life.  Perhaps more happens—­I mean in a pettier way—­when the man has leisure and can see too much of his wife.  In my case—­our case—­it was the other way—­and something almost tragic happened.  So I vote we treat it casually, as something that must have been expected sooner or later to disturb our—­our—­even tenor—­and forget it.”

“Forget it?”

“Well, yes.  I can if you can.”

“And can you forget who I am?”

“You are exactly what you were before those scoundrels recognized your mother, and—­and—­set me going.  Of course I had to find out the truth.  I thought you knew and tried to make you tell me.  But you wouldn’t—­couldn’t—­and I had to employ Spaulding.”

“Do you mean you would have married me if you had known the truth at the time?”

“Rather.”

“And—­but—­I told you—­I became a regular gambler.”

He could not help smiling.  “I have no fear of your gambling again.  And I don’t fancy you were a bit worse than the others who had no gambling blood in them—­all the world has that.  Gambling is about the earliest of the vices.  I—­if—­you wouldn’t mind promising—­I know you will keep it.”

“Nothing under heaven would induce me to play again.  But—­but—­I opened your safe like a thief and stole—­”

“Oh, not quite.  After all it was yours as much as mine.  If I had died without a will you would have got it.

“Of course—­I know what you mean—­but men have always driven women into a corner, and they have had to get out by methods of their own.  I wish now I had given you the twenty thousand.  I prefer you should accept my decision that it was all my fault.  Give me the chain.”

She drew it from her bosom and handed it to him.  He fastened the ruby in its place and threw the chain over her neck.  The great jewel lit up the front of her somber gown like a sudden torch in a cavern.

The stern despair of Hélène’s tragic mask relaxed.  She dropped her face into her hands and began to sob.  Then Ruyler was himself again.  He picked her up in his arms and settled comfortably into the deepest of the chairs.

THE END