"Is that any reason why I should throw him at the door of another woman?" Marcel's pale face twitched. "Why should a man expect any woman's door to open to him," she went on, "when he has disgraced himself all his life?"
Longville stirred restlessly. Actually he dared not strike his wife, but he had all the impulse to do so. He resorted to hoary argument.
"'Tis the unselfish, the noble woman who saves—man!" he muttered, half ashamed of his own words.
At this Marcel laughed openly. Something was rising to the surface, something that life had taught her.
"It's a poor argument to use when the unworthy one is the gainer by a woman's unselfishness," retorted Marcel. "Unless she, too, gets something out of her—her nobleness, I should think a man would hate to fling it always in her teeth."
Longville half rose; his jaw looked ugly.
"'Tis my purpose," he said slowly, harshly, "to marry Mam'selle and Pierre. I have my reasons, and if you cannot help you can keep out of the way!"
"Yes, I can do that," murmured Marcel. She had taken up her knitting and she rarely spoke while she knitted. She thought!
But if Longville's suggestion seemed to die in the mind of his own woman, it had no such fate in that of Jo Morey. When she went into her orderly house, after leaving the Captain, she put her papers on the table and stood staring ahead into space. She seemed waiting for the ugly thought he had left to follow its creator, but instead it clung to her like a stinging nettle.
"Buy a husband!" she repeated; "buy a husband."