“You must leave her, of course,” he said with quick masculine intolerance for this business which affronted a woman dear and pure to him.
“Pull my skirts aside—I suppose so,” she said drearily, “that’s what hurts. My own reactions.”
“But you can’t help her by living there—and she had no right to expose you to such a situation. It’s damnable.”
She had never seen him so excited or so very angry. He strode up and down, his mouth set, eyes smouldering. She found that she was feebly arguing for Grace but there was reassurance in the way he swept her arguments aside. He wasn’t interested in Grace. He didn’t want to discuss Grace. What she did was her own business. Let it go at that. But to involve Horatia in a living arrangement and not explain her own method of life—that was outrageous.
Suddenly he stopped and held up her face in his hands.
“And you have been thinking that all men——”
Her eyes wavered and his filled with tenderest pity.
“No, darling,” he said, quietly, “it’s not true.”
Confidence swept Horatia’s soul like a clean wind. She lifted her eyes to her lover again.