“Yes, yes!” she cried. “I believe every word you have told me. My intuition is never wrong: and I know what you have told me is the truth.”
The relief he felt at her belief in him was immediate, and yet he was not able to grasp at once its full significance.
“The jury won’t believe me,” he said. “I meant to die by what would appear an accident; but things reached the crisis too quickly. I lost my head. If I don’t end things here and now, our son will be branded as the son of a man who was hanged. Once I’m arrested I shall be watched night and day: there will not be another chance to die honourably.”
“You mustn’t speak of dying, my beloved,” she murmured. “If you were to go, do you think I could live without you? I have got to bring up our son and watch over him until he can fend for himself. Do you think I shall be able to live long enough to do so if you have left me? If you die, Jim, my life will be so smashed that even the power of motherhood will fail to keep the breath in my body. If we had no child it might be different; we would go together now, into the valley of the shadows, and side by side we would find our way to the City of God, if at all it may be found. But as it is, I can’t come with you; and you can’t have the heart to leave me behind while there’s still a chance that you need not have gone.”
“Monimé,” he answered, “listen to me. There is no hope. You are asking me to submit to imprisonment, a thing unthinkable to a wanderer like myself. You are asking me to submit to a trial in which your name will be dragged through the dirt as well as mine. You will be called the ‘woman in the case’; my passion for you will be recorded as my motive. The story of our love will be travestied and brought up against you and our son all your lives. Whereas, if I end it now, most of the tale will never be told in open court, and the whole thing will soon be forgotten.”
She laughed. “Do you think I weigh gossip against the chance, however remote, of the trial going in your favour? Do you think I care what they say against me in the court if there is any hope of your acquittal? My darling, I shall fight for your life and your good name, which is mine and Ian’s, too, to my last ounce of strength and my last penny; and in the end there will be victory, because you are innocent, and innocence shows its face as surely as guilt.”
“You really do believe what I say—that I had absolutely nothing to do with her death?” he asked, still hardly daring to credit her trust. His experiences with Dolly had left him with so profound a scepticism in regard to female mentality that even his adoration of Monimé was not wholly proof against it.
She looked down at him, and he seemed to detect an expression upon her face which was almost defiant. “My dear,” she said, “as far as I am concerned, even if you were guilty it would make no difference.”
He stared at her incredulously, for man does not know woman, nor can he penetrate to the source of her deepest convictions. It was not Monimé, it was no individual, who had spoken: it was eternal woman.
“Nothing can alter love,” she explained. “Can’t a man understand that?”