"I haven't."
"It's a case or a hard-working, thoroughly respectable man who, for no reason that is known, suddenly shoots down his wife and children in cold blood, and then blows his own head to smithereens."
"But of course there was a reason," I said; "he must have felt that he was justified."
"He seems to have had enough money and good health. And he passed for a sane, matter-of-fact sort of fellow."
"If it was the regular reason," I said, "jealousy, he wouldn't have hurt the children."
"Only a very unhappy man could kill his children," said Fulton. "His idea would be to save them from such unhappiness as he himself had experienced. But in nine cases out of ten it would be a mistaken kindness. Causes similar to those which drove the father into a despair of unhappiness would in all probability affect the children less. No two persons enjoy to the same degree, suffer to the same degree or are tempted alike. How many wronged husbands are there who swallow their trouble and endure to one who shoots?"
"Legions," I said. "Fortunately. Otherwise one could hardly sleep for the popping of pistols."
"Do you believe that or do you say it to be amusing?"
"I think that the number of husbands who find out that they have been wronged is only exceeded by the number who never even suspect it. But they are not the husbands we know, the modern novelist to the contrary notwithstanding. In our class it is the wives who are wronged as a rule; in the lower classes, the husbands. I've known hundreds of what the newspapers call society people; the women are good, with just enough exceptions to prove the rule: the men aren't."
"When you say that the women are good, you mean they are technically good?"