"I see. You're trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband left me."
"Your fault? No. It was hardly your fault, Mrs. Majendie."
He meditated. "There's another thing. You good women are apt to run away with the idea that—that this sort of thing is so tremendously important to us. It isn't. It isn't."
"Then why behave as if it were?"
"We don't. That's your mistake. Ten to one, when a man's once married and happy, he doesn't think about it at all. Of course, if he isn't happy—but, even then, he doesn't go thinking about it all day long. The ordinary man doesn't. He's got other things to attend to—his business, his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are the important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up his time."
"I see. I see. The woman doesn't count."
"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the woman may be his religion, his superstition. In your husband's case it certainly was so."
Her face quivered.
"Of course," he said, "what beats you is—how a man can love his wife with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her."
"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once, long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn't understand."