“That,” he rejoined, “may be a matter of opinion.”
“But Ralph,” she pleaded, “it isn’t a matter of opinion at all. It is a fact. I ought to know, oughtn’t I? Look at me. What am I but a poor invalid woman, the victim of a terrible accident. My limbs have been almost useless for years. Even now I can scarcely move. I am a depressing sight for any one. What but real affection and kindness could bring him here day after day?”
“Did kindness,” he asked bluntly, “prompt him to take you away from your husband?”
“Bertram never took me away from Maurice,” she expostulated. “Maurice left me—left me for some Algerian dancing girl, for whom he bought a villa at Cannes and on whom he squandered half his fortune. All the world knows that. Bertram brought me back from Paris a crushed, humiliated woman. It wasn’t his fault that he was in the motor when the accident happened.”
“There have been different versions of the affair,” Endacott declared moodily.
Madame’s eyes suddenly flashed.
“If you dare tell me that I may not love Bertram—that I do not love him—that there is any sin in my loving him, then you are a fool!” she cried. “Of course I love him. No one in the world could ever have been so wonderful to a woman as he has been to me.”
“His reputation,” Endacott began——
“Ralph!” she interrupted indignantly. “You are too great a man to talk such shibboleth. I dare say he has been a roué, and a profligate and a great gambler. I dare say he has squandered his money, has been reckless and selfish, but don’t you understand, Ralph, he is of the sort of men who could never treat a woman badly? I wish I could make you understand. At least, believe me that Bertram has treated me from the moment we first met—even when I was desperate, willing in my heart to consent to anything—as though I were a thing almost sacred. He kept my self-respect alive. I’m a broken creature now, but all there is in my life worth having I owe to him.”
Endacott moved a little uneasily in his chair.