The other shrugged his shoulders.
“It can do no harm. Whatever comes or goes, Winnie has cut me away from all chance of happiness.”
“She is your wife,” Valentine reminded him.
“What is your definition of a wife?” Kestridge asked, recklessly. “A woman who tells you frankly to your face that you are abhorrent to her, that she only consented to be your wife because of such material advantages as might come to her through you; a woman who confesses to have worked mischief between you and the one creature you love; a woman who refuses flatly to live in your home, and who sends you to Jericho or the devil, it matters not which?” He changed his tone. “By what she said last night, Winnie has made it practically impossible for us to go on with this farce of marriage. I have made my plans to go abroad, to leave her mistress of my money and of the situation. I fancy she’ll get along pretty well without me. I don’t know what you think.”
Valentine remained silent, but the expression of his face was as eloquent as words.
“I believe you consider me wrong to do what I mean doing,” the other said, a trifle sullenly, breaking the long pause, and Valentine looked up and replied frankly:
“I make no difference between you and any other man,” he said, coldly. “To me a husband’s duties can never be set aside lightly. Whether for weal or woe, you are married to this woman; your place is, therefore, with her, unless, indeed, she gives you far stronger reasons than these you have spoken of, to leave her.”
Hubert Kestridge colored hotly, and it was his turn to be silent now.
“I know you are fully in the right, although you hit it out so hardly,” he said, at last. “Perhaps, if you were situated as I am, you would not be so hard.”
“I don’t mean to be hard, Kestridge,” Valentine said, instantly, “but I have a trick of plain speaking, and, remember, you sought my advice. You must not think, however, that I am too cut-and-dried to deny you sympathy. Of all sad mistakes, a mistaken marriage is surely the hardest to suffer. You have been the victim, if you will let me say this, of your own weakness. After all, a man cannot be urged to such lengths utterly against his will, and if you were sure of the other girl’s love——”