“Liquor? I couldn’t endure that kind of a beast.”
But which martyr-wife exchanged her drunken lord except for a better fate?
“Dishonesty? I wouldn’t live with a man I didn’t respect.”
Wouldn’t she? Then why were the jail-gates draped with weeping faces and stretching arms—why the late-life efforts to “live it down” of the work-wasted woman and the husband who had served out his time?
Never? Couldn’t? Wouldn’t? What the heart of woman cannot forgive is what she has not been called upon to forgive. The libertine’s lady might just as well have learned to endure shame through ebriety, the drunkard’s dupe through lechery.
What type of man, then, does the mind of woman most despise? A villain? Scarcely, when the worst are loved the best. A traitor, a weakling, a failure? For the lowest of these, pardons are plead. Upon them, regenerating love is poured. What—what to her is the sin unpardonable?
With eyes closed against possible distractions, Satan rough-shadowed the suspects of his thoughts. And just when his mind seemed emptied of ideas, he had it.
Of course. Of course. A caught coward was what she could not forgive, woman. He would star one earthling for benefit of his spirit-mate in a play of cowardice. “Afterward”? After he was through, she scarcely would press her request.
From their Limbian “Information” he inquired the name of the personal devil of John Cabot. Upon learning that an imp named Okeh attended the banker, he demanded instant connection by wireless telephone. This he got with a promptness that might be commended to the attention of mortal systematizers.
“That you, Okeh?” he asked. “I hear that you’re responsible for the evil impulses of a Mr. John Calvin Cabot.... You speak as if you were proud of the fact. You needn’t be.... What say?... But I have a perfectly bad right to insult you.... A chance at me is just what I’m going to give you—a chance to prove your efficiency. I want the Cabot program for the immediate future. Quick, now. I am not used to waiting.”