Mordaunt shrugged his shoulders slightly. "As to that, I am fatalist enough to believe that we should have met in any case. But isn't that beside the point? I have declined to discuss the matter with anyone, and I am not going to make an exception of you."
"You must," Jack said. He threw back his shoulders as if bracing himself for a physical conflict. He was plainly in earnest.
Mordaunt turned to the table and sat down. "You are wasting your time," he said. "Argument is quite useless. I have already decided upon my plan of action, and quarrelling with you is no part of it."
"What is your plan of action?" Jack demanded.
Mordaunt took out his cigarette-case. "I shall start for Paris in a couple of hours. Meantime"—he glanced up—"I suppose you won't smoke? Have you had any breakfast?"
"Then you mean to desert her?" Jack said.
Mordaunt's face remained immovable. He began to smoke in dead silence.
Jack's teeth clenched. "I am going to have an answer," he said.
"Very well." Coldly the words fell; there was something merciless in their very utterance. "Then I will answer you; but it is my last word upon the subject. My wife followed her own choice in leaving me, and it is my intention to abide by her decision. If you call that desertion—"
"I do," Jack broke in passionately. "It is desertion, nothing less. She left you—oh, I know all about it—she left you because you literally scared her away. You terrified her into going; there was nothing else for her to do. She had done nothing wrong. But you—you dared to suspect her of Heaven knows what. You dared to think that Chris—my Chris—was capable of playing you false, you who were the only man on earth I thought good enough for her. And do you know what you have done? You have broken her heart!" He took the portrait from the mantelpiece and thrust it in front of the man at the table. "That," he said, and suddenly his voice was quivering, "that was the child you married. I gave her into your care willingly, though, God knows, I worshipped her. No, you didn't cut me out. I was never in the running. I never so much as made love to her. I always knew she was not for me. When she accepted you, I thought it was the best thing that could possibly happen. I felt she would be safe with you. You were the one fellow I would have chosen to guard her. And she needed guarding. She was as innocent and as inexperienced as a baby. She didn't know the world and its beastly ways. I thought you were to be trusted to keep her out of the mud; I could have sworn you were. But you withdrew your protection just when she needed it most. You practically turned her out, cut her adrift. She might have gone straight to the bad for all you cared. And now, like the damned blackguard that you are, you are going to clear out and leave her to break her heart!"