“Want to know the truth?”
“Yes.”
“It’s because of the woman they call ‘Lady Halloway’ and all the other girls you’ve ruined.”
“I thought it. That was why I wanted to tell you that I’m done with that way of life. I was a colossal ass in the old days. But, you know, a good many fellows have been what I was, and they’ve married, and settled down and become respected.”
“And what of the girls they’ve ruined?”
He leant forward, clasping his hands and spreading his knees apart. “You’re blaming me for the injustices of society. Women have always had to suffer. But I’ve always done the sportsmanlike thing by the girls I’ve wronged. All of them are provided for.”
“These things are your own affairs,” I said shortly; “but I’ve always felt——”
“Felt what?”
“Felt that the most disreputable thing about most prodigals is the method of their returning. They leave all the women they’ve deceived and all their bastards in the Far Country with the swine and the husks, while they hobble home to forgiveness and luxury. Simply because they acknowledge the obvious—that they’ve sinned and disgraced their fathers—they expect to escape the rewards of their profligacy. It’s cheap, Halloway. You speak as though marriage will re-instate your morals. A man should be able to bring a clean record to the woman he marries.” The off-hand manner in which he referred to his villainies had made me cold with a sense of justice. His lolling, fashionably attired person and his glib assertion that he had done with that way of life, roused my anger when I remembered his idiot son and the scene on the esplanade. He regarded me with a friendly man-of-the-world smile, pointing his delicate fingers one against the other. I would have liked him better had he shown resentment.
“You make things hard,” he objected. “If everyone thought as you do, there’d be no incentive for reformation. The man who had been a little wild would never be anything else. According to your way of thinking, he’d be more estimable as a rake than as the father of a family. You shut the door against all coming back.”