“At all events, she’s rid of him, isn’t she?”
“Oh, she’s RID of him!” Her tone implied an enigmatic reservation of some kind.
“It’s hard,” I reflected aloud, “hard to understand her making that mistake, young as she was. Even in the glimpses of her I’ve had, it was easy to see something of what she’s like: a fine, rare, high type—”
“But you didn’t know HIM, did you?” Miss Elizabeth asked with some dryness.
“No,” I answered. “I saw him twice; once at the time of his accident—that was only a nightmare, his face covered with—” I shivered. “But I had caught a glimpse of him on the boulevard, and of all the dreadful—”
“Oh, but he wasn’t always dreadful,” she interposed quickly. “He was a fascinating sort of person, quite charming and good-looking, when she ran away with him, though he was horribly dissipated even then. He always had been THAT. Of course she thought she’d be able to straighten him out—poor girl! She tried, for three years—three years it hurts one to think of! You see it must have been something very like a ‘grand passion’ to hold her through a pain three years long.”
“Or tremendous pride,” said I. “Women make an odd world of it for the rest of us. There was good old George, as true and straight a man as ever lived—”
“And she took the other! Yes.” George’s sister laughed sorrowfully.
“But George and she have both survived the mistake,” I went on with confidence. “Her tragedy must have taught her some important differences. Haven’t you a notion she’ll be tremendously glad to see him when he comes back from America?”
“Ah, I do hope so!” she cried. “You see, I’m fearing that he hopes so too—to the degree of counting on it.”