“Perhaps you might make it clearer,” I prompted.
“I’d rather Duncan did that,” she replied, using my husband’s first name, obviously, without knowing she had done so.
“Wouldn’t it be fairer—for the two of us—now? Wouldn’t it be cleaner?” I rather tremulously asked of her.
She nodded and stared down at the sheet covered with small columns of figures.
“I don’t know whether you know it or not,” she said with a studied sort of quietness, “but last week Mr. McKail began making arrangements to establish a residence in Nevada. He will have to live there, of course, for at least six months, perhaps even longer.”
I could feel this sinking in, like water going 353 through blotting-paper. The woman at the desk must have misinterpreted my silence, for she was moved to say, in a heavier effort at self-defense, “He knew, of course, that you cared for some one else.”
I looked at her, as though she were a thousand miles away. I stood there impressed by the utter inadequacy of speech. And the thing that puzzled me was that there was an air of honesty about the woman. She still so desperately clung to her self-respect that she wanted me to understand both her predicament and her motives. I could hear her explaining that my husband had no intention of going to Reno, but would live in Virginia City, where he was taking up some actual mining interests. Such things were not pleasant, of course. But this one could be put through without difficulty. Mr. McKail had been assured of that.
I tried to pull myself together, wondering why I should so suddenly feel like a marked woman, a pariah of the prairies, as friendless and alone as a leper. Then I thought of my children. And that cleared my head, like a wind sweeping clean a smoky room.
“But a case has to be made out,” I began. “It would have to be proved that I––” 354
“There will be no difficulty on that point, Mrs. McKail,” went on the other woman as I came to a stop. “Provided the suit is not opposed.”