"During your husband's absence in Norway?"
"Yes."
"Written two years after the court has been told that your happiness and peace of mind and health had been wrecked, your faith in human nature destroyed, and written to the man who was responsible for all these things?"
No answer.
"Come! Let's read one or two."
He read them one by one. Foolish, flippant, loving letters. The letters of a poor little girl-wife, hungering for love and kisses, and—yes, why not?—for cuddling (the very word was in one of them); and, in her longing, turning for it to the dishonored, tainted source whence alone she could ask it now. The poor soul broke down and cried as the merciless, rasping voice read on and on.
"Now I ask you, and I ask the jury, is this condonation? And if it isn't, what is?"
Althea threw her arms out with a little stiff, appealing gesture that she checked immediately.
"Oh!" she sobbed, "what could I do? I was only a girl. I believed what he told me. He said all men were the same."
The case had not concluded when the court rose. I sprinted back to the office. The compositor was waiting for me, but I pushed by him and opened the door of Winstanley's sanctum.