Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/172

166, the latest pictures, the political situation, and a variety of other topics.

I could feel no interest in anything, however. Horrible visions of Arthur, my husband, tête-à-tête with another woman, would fill my brain to the exclusion of everything else; disgust at my husband's deceit; contempt for my own inability to please him; wonder as to how it would all end, and a bewildering attempt to remember everything I had planned to say, played havoc with my conversational powers.

Yes, I was outrageously jealous—blindly, hatefully jealous, with the jealousy which Sardou loves to imagine and Bernhardt to portray, and though I was by no means dramatically inclined, I felt that my situation was unusual. I tried to prolong the meal. I was determined to "have it out," as the saying is, and yet I dreaded the process, because I felt that Arthur must be guilty. I knew I should feel sorry for him. He was one of those few men who could make you pity him at the same time that he cut your throat, and I was one of those many women in