Mrs. Crozier flushed. She had been masterful by nature and she had had her way very much in life. To be dominated in the most intimate things of her life by this girl was not easy to be borne; but she realised that Kitty had been a friend indeed, even if not conventional. In response to Kitty’s remark now she inclined her head.
“Well, you have told us that you and your husband haven’t made it up. That is so, isn’t it?” Kitty continued.
“If you wish to put it that way,” answered Mona, stiffening a little in spite of herself.
“P’r’aps I don’t put it very well, but it is the stony fact, isn’t it, Mrs. Crozier?”
Mona hesitated a moment, then answered: “He is very upset concerning the land syndicate, and he has a quixotic idea that he cannot take money from me to help him carry it through.”
“I don’t quite know what quixotic means,” rejoined Kitty dryly. “If it wasn’t understood while you lived together that what was one’s was the other’s, that it was all in one purse, and that you shut your eyes to the name on the purse and took as you wanted, I don’t see how you could expect him, after your five years’ desertion, to take money from you now.”
“My five years’ desertion!” exclaimed Mona. Surely this girl was more than reckless in her talk. Kitty was not to be put down. “If you don’t mind plain speaking, he was always with you, but you weren’t always with him in those days. This letter showed that.” She tapped it on her thumb-nail. “It was only when he had gone and you saw what you had lost, that you came back to him—in heart, I mean. Well, if you didn’t go away with him when he went, and you wouldn’t have gone unless he had ordered you to go—and he wouldn’t do that—it’s clear you deserted him, since you did that which drove him from home, and you stayed there instead of going with him. I’ve worked it out, and it is certain you deserted him five years ago. Desertion doesn’t mean a sea of water between, it means an ocean of self-will and love-me-first between. If you hadn’t deserted him, as this letter shows, he wouldn’t have been here. I expect he told you so; and if he did, what did you say to him?”
The Young Doctor’s eyes were full of decorous mirth and apprehension, for such logic and such impudence as Kitty’s was like none he had ever heard. Yet it was commanding too.
Kitty caught the look in his eyes and blazed up. “Isn’t what I said correct? Isn’t it all true and logical? And if it is, why do you sit there looking so superior?”
The Young Doctor made a gesture of deprecating apology. “It’s all true, and it’s logical, too, if you stand on your head when you think it. But whether it is logical or not, it is your conclusion, and as you’ve taken the thing in hand to set it right, it is up to you now. We can only hold hard and wait.”