“You didn't see him, Wallie. I did. He's been through something, I don't know what. I didn't sleep last night for thinking of his face. It had despair in it.”
“All right,” he said, angrily pausing before her. “What do you intend to do? Let them go on as they are, hoping and waiting; lauding him to the skies as a sort of superman? The thing to do is to tell the truth.”
“But we don't know the truth, Wallie. There's something behind it all.”
“Nothing very creditable, be sure of that,” he pronounced. “Do you think it is fair to Elizabeth to let her waste her life on the memory of a man who's deserted her?”
“It would be cruel to tell her.”
“You've got to be cruel to be kind, sometimes,” he said oracularly. “Why, the man may be married. May be anything. A taxi driver! Doesn't that in itself show that he's hiding from something?”
She sat, a small obese figure made larger by her furs, and stared at him with troubled eyes.
“I don't know, Wallie,” she said helplessly. “In a way, it might be better to tell her. She could put him out of her mind, then. But I hate to do it. It's like stabbing a baby.”
He understood her, and nodded. When, after taking a turn or two about the room he again stopped in front of her his angry flush had subsided.
“It's the devil of a mess,” he commented. “I suppose the square thing to do is to tell Doctor David, and let him decide. I've got too much at stake to be a judge of what to do.”