Well now permit me, my dear Mr. Gordon, to be very frank with you.
I met your wife only once before she married you.
She was a merry-hearted, healthy girl, with superb colour, and the figure of a young Venus. She was a belle, and much admired by many worth-while men.
During her honeymoon, she wrote me a most charming letter speaking of her happiness, and of her desire to make you an ideal wife.
You and Edna were my guests for a few days when your first child was a year old. She seemed more beautiful than ever, with an added spiritual charm, and you were the soul of devotion.
You are the type of man who pays a compliment as naturally as he breathes, and whose vision is a sensitive plate which retains an impression of every feminine grace. This impression is developed in the memory-room afterward, and framed in your conversation.
The ordinary mind calls such a man a flirt, or, in common parlance, "a jollier;" but I know you to be merely appreciative of womankind in general, while your heart is beautifully loyal to its ideal. You are a clean, wholesome man, who could not descend to intrigue. You are fine-looking, and you possess a gift in conversing.
Of course women are attracted to you. Edna was proud of this fact, and seemed to genuinely enjoy your popularity.
That was five years ago.
One year ago I visited your home. Edna was the mother of three children, born during the first five years of marriage.