"Nonsense! we were equally culpable—equally indiscreet. Now we are to be punished equally. You by your conscience, and I openly. Please think no more about it."
"If only you were free!" he exclaimed.
"Which I'm not—and haven't any prospect of being. Like all vacillating people, Lorraine has suddenly become possessed by a fixed idea, and right or wrong he will cling to it until he dies. Why couldn't it have been to divorce me, instead of to keep me? However, it is profitless to wonder why, when to wonder won't make it any different." She gave a little gesture of despair. "Do you think Lorraine will actually have Porshinger arrested—or is it only an evanescent fancy?"
"He has had him arrested—here. Within half an hour of his departure, he was back with an officer and a warrant—and the officer has taken Porshinger to the magistrate's."
"It's just as well, I suppose," she reflected. "We can have everything out in court at once, and not have it in detachments forever. The more I think of it, the better I like Lorraine's course—if I must fight; and, as you have said, we can't avoid a fight if I am to have a shred of reputation left. The Amherst affair well nigh damned me—only you and Gladys and a few others, and my mother's position, enabled me to regain a little of what I had lost—caused Society to suspend its final judgment on me. Now if I'm guilty of this Porshinger matter, it will be taken to show such a natural aptitude to go wrong—such a disposition for the unmentionable that there is only one course open to me: to go away and never return. So far as the town is concerned, I might just as well be dead—better, indeed."
He nodded gravely. He, too, knew that it was as she had said. Even Lorraine's attitude in the matter would have no effect. Society would have none of her—she would have condemned herself.
"You are not going to lose," he encouraged. "It is not a pleasant alternative to be sure, but it is the only one possible under the circumstances, and we're going to carry it through. It may be a bit unpleasant while it lasts, but it will soon be over—and all the sympathy will be with you. Porshinger is such a contemptible cad that no one of right mind will doubt you for a moment."
"No one of right mind should doubt," she admitted—"but only the future will reveal whether my past hasn't overcome their right minds."
"Why don't you forget your past—it's past!" he exclaimed.
"As I think you have said to me many times, Montague!" she smiled, "and as you know is impossible."