Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/341

Rh as I tried to do for my mother. I've got rid of that chap for you, Rebecca, drugged him, asphyxiated him, put him to sleep. He doesn't exist any more."

Reba murmured, "I didn't marry him out of pity."

"Well, all right. You have it your way. He isn't around any more to argue with you about it. It doesn't matter."

Reba glanced away. Her eyes followed a squirrel darting up the trunk of a tree. She had herself well under control now. She ought to, she should think. She had had time enough. It had just struck half-past four.

"I think I know what you mean," she said gravely. ("If the man I married doesn't exist for me any more, then I don't exist for him," she was thinking. "That's what he's trying to tell me as delicately as possible.")

She didn't say this outloudout-loud [sic]—not yet. And Nathan had no idea of the nature of her conclusions, as he reached for her shopping-bag, took it out of her lap (just the fact that it was hers made his hand tremble a little), opened it, and dropped into it a small white package, "The ring you gave the sailor-boy," he explained lightly, snapped the bag together, and laid it down beside her on the bench. "I figured it this way," he went on in the same forced cheerful tone. "I didn't want anything of claims on you, that belonged to some one who's dead."

Reba glanced down at the bag beside her. "Then of course you'd like your rings back, too," she said, in a little hard strained voice. "I've got only the wedding-ring here with me," she went on, drawing off her glove, "I'll have to send you the other one. I didn't wear