"But I want you to hear it," said Ann Woltor, still in that deadly quiet but absolutely firm voice.
George Keets's lips were drawn suddenly to a mere thin white line.
"One has no desire to intrude, Miss Woltor," he protested.
"It is no intrusion," said Aim Woltor.
For a single hesitating moment her sombre eyes swept the waiting group. Then, without further break or pause, she plunged into her narrative.
"I am the May Girl's mother," she said. "I ran away from the May Girl's father. I ran away with another man. I don't pretend to explain it. I don't pretend to condone it. This is not a discussion of ethics but a mere statement of history. All that I insist upon your understanding—is that I ran away from a legalized life of incessant fault-finding and criticism to an unlegalized life of absolute approval and love.
"I cannot even admit, after the first big wrench, of course, that I greatly regretted the little child I left behind. Mothers are always supposed to regret such things I know, but I was not perhaps a normal mother. I suffered, of course, but it was a suffering that I could stand. I could not stand, it seems, the suffering of living with my child's father.
"My husband followed us after a few months, not so much for outraged love, I think, as for vindictiveness. We met in a cafe, the three of us. My husband and my lover were both cool-blooded men. My lover was a Quaker who had never yet lifted his hand against any man. The two men started arguing. I came of a hot-blooded family. I had never seen men arguing only about a woman before. More than that I was vain. I was foolish. The biggest portrait painter of the hour had chosen me for what he considered would be his masterpiece. I taunted my lover and my husband with the fact that neither of them loved me. John Stoltor struck my husband. It was the first blow. My husband made a furious attack on him. I tried to intervene. He struck me instead, with such damage as you note. Enraged beyond all sanity at the sight, John Stoltor killed him.
"Even then, so overwrought as I was, so bewildered with my mouth all cut and bleeding, I snatched up a mirror to gauge the extent of my ruin. John Stoltor spoke to me—the only harsh words of his life.
"Your damage can be repaired in an hour," he said—"but his— mine—never!"