"Why—if Miss Claxton does not wish it? If she was, through your exertions, acquitted, she has, as you know, suffered the penalty of the crime ten times over. If she prefers to continue that pain and ignominy rather than allow you to again open the inquiry, what right have you, as her friend and agent, to reopen it?"
"I owe a higher allegiance—to the law of my country, and the law of my God."
"And when these laws conflict, I presume you would wish to obey the latter? My notion is that Miss Claxton's conduct indicates such a conflict." Durgan's voice was still hard and cold.
"I should need to be assured of such contradiction."
"Are you not willing to give her the benefit of the presumption?"
There is not a man on earth who is content to be alone. Durgan, recently horror-stricken at the thought of the part his wife might have played, realized how little reason he had to feel such blind confidence in anyone whom he had the right to love, and envied Alden his opportunity for faith. Nothing like starvation to give a man a clear sight of another's luxuries and corresponding duties.
"In the war," he added, "we Southerners had to learn to trust out and out whom we trusted at all."
"That Miss Claxton is doing what she conceives to be right, I have no doubt," said Alden, stiffly.
Even in the dim light there was a visible improvement of attitude; some heart for life appeared to return to him with this declaration, which a moment before would have been a lie. Durgan could almost have laughed out in irony.
"What she supposes to be right," repeated the reviving lover, "but I cannot approve."