“You agree, then?”
“I don’t. You’d save our faces for us, but what d’you suppose we’d think of ourselves? The thing’s not decent. People don’t do things like that. Men can run off with other men’s wives and still respect themselves; if they did what you suggest—take the husband’s happiness and his good name as well—they’d know what to call themselves, though no one else suspected.”
“What’s that?”
“Blackguards.”
“So in your opinion it’s worse to take a wife with her husband’s consent than to steal her? Humph!”
He leant across the table for a cigar. With great deliberation he cut the end. When it was well alight, he thrust his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, looking me up and down. When he spoke, he left gaps between his words. There was the rumble of suppressed anger in what he said.
“I thought you were a strong man, Cardover, or I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I have. You fell in love with my wife without knowing she was married; I don’t blame you for that. But after you knew, you followed her—followed her to her home-town. You’ve made an impossible situation. You can’t leave it at that; you’ve got to help out, and, by God, you shall. I’ve got to lose her and stand the disgrace of it. You’ve got to lose your self-respect. What d’you think life is, anyhow? If you gamble, you incur debts. We’re going to play this game to a finish. You talk of decency and honor; you should have thought of them earlier. You came here to rob me of my wife; well, now I’m going to give her to you because she can’t do without you. And now, out of consideration for me, you want to crawl out at the last minute. Your crawling out may save appearances, but it don’t alter facts. You’re something worse than a blackguard—a quitter.”
He drew in his breath as if he were about to strike; then he flung out his fist, shaking it at me. “Don’t you want her?”
“You know I want her.”
“Then what’s the matter? Are you afraid of the price?”