“You angel!” he whispered.
“You’ll hear another story from his people. All—except Olive. They will tell you that—that I am a—” she smiled wistfully—”a flirt.”
He had no words hot enough. He kicked a stone savagely. “The vile slanderers!” he cried. “They are all tarred with the same brush. You’re lucky to be done with them.”
“There was young Gerard Brode staying in the house, a mere boy up from Oxford and bubbling over with Socialism. I was interested in his theories and we had long talks, and I tried to convert Douglas—that was my poor husband—and to persuade him that we ought to divide our property with everybody; but he met me with coarse ribaldry, and said he wasn’t going to divide his wife with any man, least of all a whipper-snapper like Gerard Brode, and feeble taunts like that, and that was the beginning of our dissensions.”
“Poor Mrs. Wyndwood!” he said, and felt it a sweet privilege to pity her. “And so you spent your fortune on the movement.”
She smiled sadly. “Scarcely my fortune. Poor Douglas never lived to inherit, and I wasn’t born with a gold spoon in my mouth, though it had a crest on it. But who has been telling you about my indiscretions?” She did not wait for an answer, adding: “But, there, you know all about me now,” and her pathetic smile had a dazzling camaraderie, though it flickered away as she wound up meditatively: “I wonder why I told you. Shall we go in?”
“Not yet,” he pleaded, hastily. “Oh, if you knew how proud I am of your confidences! That they should be made to me—to me! Oh, if you knew what my life has been!” He felt choking.
“You terrify me,” she returned, lightly. “Nothing very dreadful, I trust.”
“I am nothing, nobody.” He struggled with his voice. “I have slept in the streets. I have consorted with the vilest.”
“All the more honor to you that you are fine.”