There was silence in the room. He had mercilessly condensed the case against Lois Montgomery, reducing it to its harshest terms for Phil's contemplation. It was in Phil's mind that she had nothing to do with those things; that the woman against whose cheek she had laid her own was not Thomas Kirkwood's recreant wife, but another and very different person. She did not know how to express this; it seemed preposterous to insist to her father that his former wife was not the same woman that she had held speech with that day.
"I can't talk about her in that way, daddy. I can't tell you just how I feel. But it seemed so wonderful, when I went into the house, and those horrible creatures were circling round her like wolves, that we understood each other, she and I, without a word being said! And I hated them all, except dear old Amy. They all went home and Amy went off and left us alone, and we talked just as though we had been old friends."
She ceased as though to attempt to describe it would be profanation.
"What did she say—about me?" he asked blindly.
"Oh, she didn't talk about you at all! It wasn't that kind of talk—not about what she had done—not even about what she meant to do! She is so young! She is just like a girl! And she speaks so charmingly, with the loveliest voice. It's like the way the water ripples round the big boulders at The Run."
"She hadn't anything to say about her going off? I don't quite believe you mean that, Phil."
"That's exactly the truth, daddy"; and there was grieved surprise in her tone. "Why, she isn't like that; she wouldn't ever say anything to hurt any one. I haven't words to tell you about her, because there was never any one like her. She is all sunniness and sweetness. And she's the most amusing person I ever saw,—ever so droll and funny!"
Phil's refusal or inability to see her mother in robes of sin irritated Kirkwood. For Phil to call her an amusing person was sheer childish naïveté. Phil was the victim of an infatuation which he could understand now that his wife began to live again in his imagination. He had read in books that the maternal instinct will assert itself after long separations, where mother and child are without other clue than that of the mysterious filial and maternal tie to guide them; but his practical sense rejected the idea. If he had been warned of Lois's unaccountable return, he might have fortified Phil against her charms, but now it was too late. Lois was Phil's mother. Shocked as he was by this termination of his Christmas-Day happiness, his nature revolted against any attempt to shatter Phil's new idol. The fact that Lois had sinned as much against Phil as against himself was not something that he could urge now that Phil had taken her stand. The thought of Lois brought before him not only the unhappy past, but she seemed, with the cruelest calculation, to have planted herself in the path of his happy future.
He was intent upon a situation that called for immediate handling. He tried to bring the scattered dim stars in this new firmament to focus. He might go to Nan and endeavor to minimize the effects of Lois's return, urging that if she wished to spend the rest of her life in Montgomery it was her affair, and had nothing whatever to do with her former husband or the woman he meant to marry. This was a sane, reasonable view of the situation; but its sanity and reasonableness were not likely to impress Nan Bartlett. Such an event as the sudden return of Lois would pass into local history as a great sensation. Jack Holton's re-appearance only a few weeks earlier had caused his fellow-townsmen to attack the old scandal with the avidity of a dog unearthing a neglected bone; and the return of the woman in the case could hardly fail to prove far more provocative of gossip. If Lois persisted in remaining in Montgomery, it was wholly unlikely that Nan would ever marry him; nor could he with any delicacy insist upon her doing so. They might marry and move to Indianapolis, thereby escaping the discomforts of the smaller town's criticism; and this was made possible by his brightening prospects. At any rate, it was only fair to go to Nan at once and lay the matter before her. Even now the news might have reached her; news spreads quickly in the world's compact Montgomerys.
Phil aroused herself as she heard him fumbling for his coat at the hall-rack. She found a match and lighted the gas.