"You were about to defend her just now without question. You said that she was most to be pitied. I know why—you knew her before she was married. That was five years ago. Marriage develops people"—there was the bitter note again—"and she developed into a woman that you never knew and never dreamed could live in the same body with her. She had the happiness of a home and the life's happiness of two—and possibly three—persons in her hands. For the sake of a vicious intrigue which she now sees could never bring her anything but misery, she sacrificed her boy and me. And there is no consolation for me in the thought that she was caught in the ruins of the home that she pulled down!"
Noel stirred in his chair but did not speak. In spite of his breezy humor and love of light conversation he had been blessed with the divine power of silence.
"Her misery is no consolation to me," Floriot went on, his voice trembling slightly, "because I—I—old man, I still love her! And she loved me—for a year! Oh, Noel, that is the worst of the hell that I have lived in for two years! She loved me—for a year!"
He paused in his walk and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Noel watched him silently.
"But I am not weak enough nor cowardly enough to let that weigh with me. The boy must be protected. He must never know that she is alive—never know what she did." He seemed to be talking more to himself than to his friend. "If she came back there is no knowing how long she would stay!" He clenched his fists end cried bitterly:
"The man who said that a woman who was untrue to one man would be untrue to two or a dozen knew her and her kind!"
Noel was motionless; and, after a few more turns up and down the room, Floriot went on:
"I know that she must have loved me, or why should she have married me? If she wanted position she could have married men farther up in the world than I was—than I am now. If she wanted money she could have married a bigger bank account than mine. No! She loved me—for a year. You said she was not naturally wicked. She was nothing else. Her love is a passion that bums itself out in a year and she will probably have a dozen lovers before she dies!"
There was a restless movement in the chair that Floriot did not notice.
"Noel, you can't realize the happiness of my life until I—I—learned that I was a fool! For the first year I pitied the whole world because it couldn't be as utterly happy as I was. It didn't seem possible that a man could be more completely filled with joy and content. Then our boy was born, and after that it seemed that before I had been miserable by contrast!" Anguish choked him and he was silent until he recovered control.