“Yes—there are exceptions,” said he. “There are American men who spend time with the American woman. And what does she do to them? Look at the poor asses!—neglecting their business, letting their minds go to seed. They don’t make her wise. She makes them foolish—as foolish as herself—and her children.”
You may perhaps imagine into what a state this talk of Armitage’s threw me. He was talking generalities. But every word he spoke went straight home to me. He had torn the coverings from my inmost family life, had exposed its soul, naked and ugly, to my fascinated gaze.
He finished dinner, lighted a cigarette—sat back watching me with a mysterious smile, half amused, wholly sympathetic, upon his handsome face, younger than his forty-five years—for he was considerably older than I. I was hardly more than barely conscious of that look of his, or of his presence. Suddenly I struck my fist with violence upon the arm of my chair. And I said:
“I will do something! It is not hopeless!”
He shook his head slowly, at the same time exhaling a cloud of smoke. “I tried, Godfrey,” said he, “and I had a better chance of success than you could possibly have. For my wife had been brought up by a sensible father and mother in a sensible way, and she had been used to fashionable society all her life and, when I married her, seemed to have proved herself immune. A few years and—” His cynical smile may not have been genuine. “She leads the simpletons. But you’ll see for yourself.”
“When you know what to do, and feel as you do,” said I, “why did you suggest our going into your society?”
“It isn’t mine,” laughed he. “It’s my wife’s. It doesn’t belong to the men. It belongs to the women.”
“Into your wife’s society?” persisted I.
“Why did I suggest it? Because I wished to please you, and I know you like to please your wife. And she’s an American woman—therefore, society mad. She has her daughter at the Ryper joint, hasn’t she?”
I sat morosely silent.