"She never was my wife," he persisted stubbornly.
I looked at him with a feeling of despair,—not unmixed, I must confess, with anger. Most of all, however, I wanted to reach him; to make him see things as they were; and I wanted to save the poor woman. I leaned forward, and laid my fingers on his arm. My eyes were smarting, but I would not cry.
"But if there were no question of her at all," I pleaded, "you must do what is right for your own sake. You have made her pledges, and you can't in common honesty give them up."
"She set me free from all that when she lied to me. I made pledges to a girl, not to another man's wife."
"But she didn't know. She thought she was free to marry you. She believed she was honestly your wife."
"She never was, she never was."
He repeated it stubbornly as if the fact settled everything.
"She was!" I broke out hotly. "She was your wife; and she is your wife! When a man and a woman honestly love each other and marry without knowing of any reason why they may not, I say they are man and wife, no matter what the law is."
"Suppose the husband had lived?" he demanded, with a hateful smile. "The law really settles it."
"Do you believe that?" I asked him. "Or do you only wish to believe it?"