Gerry nodded.
“Just so! If he didn’t love her, he’d refuse to let her go. It’s the supreme test, isn’t it?”
Overton was apparently deaf to this; his mind was absorbed with his own problems.
“It was an agreement—I understood it as an agreement—that nothing should be said. I’ve hushed up Asher. He was the one who might have known that I couldn’t have been even near death when Faunce left me. It never occurred to me—never—that he’d tell her! It’s—it’s incredible!”
“No, it isn’t. I know the man. He’s crazed with remorse. He was probably glad to be relieved from his secret. The thing has preyed on him, and weighed him down like a yoke on his shoulders. He was glad to get it off, I’ll wager!”
“He had no right to consider himself,” Overton broke out. “She was the only one to be considered.”
The doctor sank back in his chair musingly.
“I think he’s considered her in the best way at last. She had to know. What was wrong was not telling her at first; but he’s willing to right it, and he has righted it as far as he could, by confessing. The judge is bent on freeing her, and she’ll be free in a few months. That’s the only way out of it, except death.”
Overton came back to the chair opposite and sat down. He was strongly moved. Nothing that Gerry had said had taken much hold upon him but the bare fact that Diane would be wonderfully set free again. It seemed to restore the old order of things, to put him back where he had been before she told him that she was married. His heart leaped up in a new and keen desire for happiness. Then he became aware of the doctor’s voice.
“It’s just as well you let him go in your place. It’ll hush up scandal, and make people think the separation is only a lovers’ quarrel. The question is, can you keep it quiet? Won’t these Englishmen tell the story?”