Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/389

Rh "I am going to leave you now. I must go down town." Susan sprang up, closed the door, and standing with her back firmly against it, said, in a low tone, breathlessly,—

"You shall not go till you tell me what has so changed you in this one twenty-four hours. Why, Tom! Do you know how you look at me? How you speak to me? Why, I should be dead in one week, if it kept on like this. What have I done? What has come to you?"

He looked at her curiously and observantly.

"How do I look at you? How do I speak to you?" he said.

Susan was crying hard, now. She could hardly speak. "You look at me," she sobbed, "as if I were not your wife, and never had been. You speak to me as if you hated me; all that is in your tone. Oh, you 'd know it quickly enough, if I looked at you even once with such an expression! Tom, I shall go mad if you don't tell me! You can't deceive me. You need n't think you can. I know every slightest intonation of your voice, every shade of your eye. I 've seen you vexed about little things, or out of patience, or tired—but this is different; this is horrible. I know I must have offended you in some way, and it is cruel in you not to tell me,—cruel, cruel, cruel!"

He still stood looking at her with a cool