"Well, is this the first time you have suspected that?" As though he had always suspected it.
"No! But—"
"But what?"
"Is he worthy of her, John?"
"Don't be foolish, Mary. Kenneth is a true and honorable man. Yes—" pausing to listen to her expostulations,—"I know he used to drink some; but I never saw him intoxicated. He played cards as we do here, and when he was in the company of men who gambled, he gambled too."
"But morally, John. It's goodness that a woman cares most about. Is he all right morally?"
He drew his chair close to hers.
"I believe Kenneth to be clean morally. If he had been immoral here, I should have known of it. And yet he, like the other men, has been surrounded by temptation. What is gross does not appeal to him. I have never known him to speak lightly of any woman. For you and Edith he has the deepest respect; for Carla, he has the utmost compassion; and for Miss Bright, (bless her!) he has a reverence I have never seen any man show to any woman."
"Then he loves her, doesn't he?"
"He never told me so," he answered, smiling; "I doubt if he has told her."