“There may have been extenuating circumstances. What do you and I know about her inside life? Until we have been tempted, as she was, we have no moral right to set up our code—”
“You think I have never been tempted? I could tell you a story ... if I was a-mind to. It was only my sense of honour and duty. And that ought to be enough for Adelaide Nims or any other woman.”
“She may not have had a very clear conception of the meaning of ‘honour’ and ‘duty.’ Do you think those terms mean the same thing to all women? Do they mean the same thing to any woman, at all times? You don’t know anything about the inner life of the girl who grows up in a loveless home, or is trapped in a childless home of her own, with a man who doesn’t love her. Your life has been crowded with responsibility and affection. You have a husband whose devotion to you is the most beautiful—”
“You think David is a paragon. You haven’t had to live with him for almost twenty-eight years. You haven’t had to drive him, every step he took, for fear he would sit down on you, and let the family starve. And as for the children ... what has that got to do with it? Why—it was when Isabel was so sick that—that the minister kept calling and calling. All the women in the church were crazy about him. I never dreamt he was in love with me till the night before the baby died. But I showed him his place, quick enough, when he told me he could see that David didn’t understand or appreciate me.” Her eyes gleamed with pride, as if she would have gloated: “There! You didn’t know I had been tempted—and by the minister, too!”
“For all that, Mrs. Trench, you can’t draw the line between the woman who sins and the one who is saved from sinning by some fortuitous accident. Your baby died, the next day. If she had lived ... and you had seized the chance for the happiness you had missed, I would have no condemnation for you. I know. I was almost in sight of that treacherous snare—when the axle of our motor car broke, and my father overtook us and—brought me to my senses. We were within a mile of the pier where his yacht was anchored—the man who was as unhappy in his loveless home as I was in mine. We were going to Italy, to hunt for what we both had missed. My husband had gone to Egypt with another woman. I told myself that my marriage vow was an empty mockery....” She stopped, a sickening wave of self-disgust overwhelming her. Why had she bared her soul to this woman?
Lavinia? She made no effort to conceal her horror. So this was why Mrs. Ascott did not wear mourning!
“And he, your husband—divorced you?”
“No, I divorced him. In New York there is only one cause for divorce, and in the eyes of the law, I had committed no offence. Mrs. Nims, with her bringing up—with the family environment that surrounds her and her brother—”
“Oh, with men it is different. You don’t expect morality in them. David says that Hal is fast. That’s at the bottom of the whole trouble. I wish I hadn’t said anything about the affair. I might have known you wouldn’t see it as I do. But then, I hadn’t suspected—” She checked herself. There were some things Lavinia wouldn’t say, even when she was indignant to the core.