She knew that what Don Carey purposed doing was wrong, hideously wrong. It was the act of a coward. Yet, in this particular case, was there not something of heroism in it? To save his wife from the long-drawn-out humiliation of a trial— Sophie Carey had appealed to her. Yet Sophie Carey had not appealed because of cowardice, because she feared humiliation; Sophie appealed to her because she wished to spare her husband a felon's fate.
Exquisitely she suffered during the few seconds that she faced the servants. Right or wrong? Yet what was right and what was wrong? Are there times when the end justifies the means? Does right sometimes masquerade in the guise of wrong? Does wrong sometimes impersonate right? Nice problems in ethics are not solved when one is at high emotional pitch. It takes the philosopher, secluded in his study, to classify those abstractions which are solved, in real life, on impulse.
And then decision was taken from her. In later life, when faced with problems difficult of solution, she would remember this moment, not merely because of its tragic associations, but because she had not been forced to decide a question involving right and wrong. Life would not always be so easy for her.
But now— Somewhere out in the darkness sounded a revolver shot. Whether or not it was right to take one's life to save another added shame no longer mattered. Whether or not it was right to stand by and permit the taking of that life no longer mattered. The problem had been solved, for right or wrong, by Carey himself.
For the second time in a week, for the second time in her life, Clancy Deane fainted.
[XXXII]
She was still in the living-room when she came to her senses. Sophie Carey was gone; the Ragans were also gone. Clancy guessed that they were attending to their mistress. As for herself, she felt the need of no attention. For her first conscious thought was that the cloud that had hung over her so steadily for the past week, which had descended so low that its foggy breath had chilled her heart, was forever lifted.
She was not selfish—merely human. Not to have drawn in her breath in a great sigh of relief would have indicated that Clancy Deane was too angelic for this world. And she was not; she was better than an angel because she was warmly human.