Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/119

 a little uncertainty—ah, it was very little, but it made a great deal of difference.

"America seems queer enough to me now," she said presently.

"Very likely," answered Pembroke. "You have remained here much longer already than I expected."

Madame Koller at this fixed her eyes upon Pembroke in a way that made him wince. A blush, too, showed through his dark skin.

"Can you—can you—say that to me?" she cried.

Like any other man under the same circumstances, Pembroke remained perfectly silent—because it is a well-known fact that when a woman takes the initiative in tender speeches, the man, if he be a man, is at once silenced. But Madame Koller was fluent.

"I know what you think of me," she said. This surprised Pembroke, who really did not know what he thought of her. "You think me the weakest woman in the world. But I have been strong. While my husband lived, heaven knows what I endured. He was the cruelest creature God ever made."

Pembroke thought it was the same old story of continental husbands and wives. He had once known a marchese who made no secret that he occasionally beat his marchesa. But Madame Koller almost made him smile at the grotesqueness of what she told him, although it was real enough to her to make her weep in the telling.