“I want you to hear my story, and then tell me frankly whether or not my husband was a victim!”
It was a very long and very harrowing story. It obliged them to go to the lady’s house and to have tea there, and to sit in her charming little sitting-room until dark, in order that it should all be told.
She was Mrs. Hamilton, she said, known to Marian, as to all other women of any social pretentions in that particular suburb, as the martyr wife of a fiendish husband. What she had suffered no one knew—except the twenty or thirty people whom she had told. She ended in tears.
Andrew comforted her with kindly words and complete exonerations. He said that she was blameless. The clock struck six, and he rose to take leave.
“Good-by!” said Mrs. Hamilton, giving him her slender hand. “Doctor, you’ve helped me. You’ve understood. Mayn’t I see you again? You don’t know what sympathy means to a lonely, heart-broken woman.”
He assured her that he would be delighted to come again, as soon as he had a free moment.
IV
He had declined the use of Mrs. Hamilton’s motor; he preferred to walk home and to reflect upon this new type. He was not altogether a fool. In spite of the fact that she was a very attractive woman, he had made up his mind that he would never go to her house again—not even to study her.
“No!” he was saying to himself. “She’s morbid—irresponsible. They’re really dangerous, that reckless sort!”
A hand clutched his sleeve and a breathless voice cried: