Kate braced herself for what she knew was coming.
"I—I kept on seeing Mr. Channing, even after you told me not to—You never made me promise anything, you know."
"I trusted you."
"Yes, but it isn't fair to trust people when they don't want you to! If you had asked me any questions, I think I should have told you the truth—I think so. But you didn't ask me any questions.—It wasn't his fault, Mummy. I made him come. I used to meet him in the Ruin every night." She peered at her mother anxiously, and Kate got up abruptly and crossed the room so that her face should not be visible.
"That isn't all," went on the hurried voice, rather breathless now. "You see—it didn't seem very honorable, somehow, to go on meeting him like that, on your place, when you didn't know about it—"
"No," agreed Kate.
"So—so I thought I'd just better go away with him.—Oh, he didn't ask me to, he didn't really want me to—he said it was too much of a sacrifice to ask of me. But—you and I know, Mother, don't we? that there's no sacrifice too great to make when you love a man!"
"Oh, my little girl," groaned Kate, "how could you love him like that when you knew about—that woman, knew what sort of man he was?"
Jacqueline said eagerly, "But he explained all about that woman. He never really loved her at all, but he was lonely, and she was very beautiful and fascinating, as that sort of woman knows how to be. And artistic people are so susceptible. It was a sort of experiment—experience is an author's stock in trade, you know." (Kate could almost hear Channing saying it.) "It turned out wrong, of course. Why, Mother, she was horrid! The fact that a bad woman had got hold of him was all the more reason for a good woman to—to win him back. Oh, I suppose he was weak—I know he was—but weak people are the very ones who need us most, Mother, aren't they?"
Kate came behind her chair and laid her cheek on the girl's hair. "Don't say anything more, dear. I know, I understand. Surely nobody, neither God nor man, can condemn us women for our divine gift of pity."