Dan forbore comment. There needed from him no condemnation of the husband. The wife's conviction as to Jim's guilt was complete. So he avoided Lou's reference to her husband's culpability, and spoke to the point:
"You want to get away without seeing him again," he remarked, in a tone of positiveness, as if the matter admitted of no doubt.
"Yes," the wife answered. "It would be too horrible to see him again! And for Nell—"
Dan McGrew nodded sympathetically.
"It would only mean a nasty row," he agreed. "You might as well spare yourself that—and spare the child, too," he concluded, craftily. For he realized that Lou would fly fast and far for the child's sake, if not for her own. He detested the necessity of the child's presence in their flight, but he recognized the fact that it was a necessity, and therefore to be endured—even, as far as possible, to be turned to advantage.
"Yes," Lou continued, "we must hurry as fast as we can, for I suppose there's no telling when Jim might return. And it would be dreadful to run into him in the town, on the way to the train."
Dan McGrew nodded assent.
"It would, indeed!" he declared. "In the condition he's in now there's no telling what he might do."
Lou shuddered at the memory of her husband's sodden face, as she had seen it resting on the breast of the woman in Murphy's saloon.
"We must not meet him!" she declared desperately. "It would be too terrible to have him see Nell." She pressed her hands to her bosom as if to hold back the emotion that surged within her. "More dreadful for Nell to see him. I want her to have a clean memory of her father, whatever he is."