Another Woman's House by Mignon G. Eberhart

of it! It was unreal, fantastic. It seemed to me that everyone must see I could not have done that. Even in prison, day after day and night after night, I could not understand their not seeing it!” She waited a moment and said more quietly, “I was sustained, I think, by knowing that some day they would see how wrong they were. That the truth must come out. Still—now it’s happened I can hardly believe that either.”
    Her soft brown gaze shifted. Richard’s footsteps were coming back along the hall, toward the library. Alice said, “I’ll go back upstairs. I promised Richard that I’d sleep.” She replaced the small cupid carefully and locked the doors and slid the key back into the drawer as Richard came into the room.
    â€œYou’d better rest now, Alice,” he said very quietly.
    â€œYes. I’m just going.” She hesitated, looking at Myra. “You’ve been so good to us, Myra.” Her voice broke a little. She held the handkerchief tighter in her hand. “You came to a house with a pall upon it. You stayed here, all this time for Aunt Cornelia—and for Richard. None of us can thank you enough but I am more deeply indebted to you, Myra, than anyone else. You’ve been—wonderful.”
    I’ve fallen in love with your husband, thought Myra. If you had been one hour—one minute—later in coming home, I’d have consented to take your place. I’d have fought to take your place. And still in my heart I want it and I want your husband, and I’ve got to fight, all my life perhaps, against that longing.
    Richard’s face was white. She glanced at him and, with anguish in her heart, away again. He knew what she was thinking. He said, “Myra has been more than loyal; so has Aunt Cornelia. You must go, Alice. You can talk tomorrow.”
    â€œTomorrow,” said Alice, “in my own home. Every tomorrow—yes, yes, I’m going. But I can’t sleep. I told Francine to have Barton serve dinner in my room for both of us. You’ll come up then, Richard?”
    Richard’s lips tightened. “Yes, Alice.”
    She smiled and gave a little, childish wave with the crumpled handkerchief and went away. The soft rustle of her silken robe, the light sound of her footsteps diminished. Richard stood, watching her. Myra watched as she reached the stairway and started upward, so small, so slight and delicate a figure against the dark panels and the solid steps. Neither of them spoke until Alice had disappeared up the wide steps and around the turn of the broad landing.
    Then Myra turned and looked up at Richard and he was looking at her.
    â€œRichard, you heard her!”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThanking me!”
    There was pain in his eyes and something else, something queerly like anger. Even through her own complex and mingled pain and self-reproach she saw that and was touched with question and a resultant small dismay because she did not and now never would know and understand his every look and every word with the dear accustomedness of marriage.
    He said in a strained, almost angry voice, “You must not reproach yourself or me. Nothing has happened that could possibly be prevented.”
    â€œWe had no right …”
    â€œStop!” He interrupted her with a harsh note in his voice as if the anger in his eyes had flared into a spark. But then immediately, if that was true, he controlled it. He said very quietly, but with great earnestness, “Listen, and remember this always. We do not require justification, either of us. That is not specious reasoning; it is fact.”
    But her own pain drove her on too quickly. “People always say that!” she cried. “It is always possible to justify some way a mean and shoddy …”
    He came to her and took her by the shoulders hard. “You are not to say that! There is nothing mean and nothing shoddy between us.”
    As suddenly as