“Yes—but he may be home any day.”
“So you didn’t agree with the step Cecily took?” he asked presently, continuing his merciless questioning,—“leaving him, I mean.”
“On the contrary, I quite agreed. But one need not take unnecessarily long steps.”
“Merely steps of the conventional length, you would say? Just long enough to keep a woman at the side of a man who is unworthy of her.”
She answered his bitterness very gently.
“There’s so much more in it than that—to a woman like Cecily. She has loved him—and now he needs her. I understand it.”
He gave a short laugh. “Will he understand it? I picture him—complacent.”
“No, Dick,” said Rose, gravely. “He’s been too far into the depths. If he hadn’t, I should never have written to Cecily.”
She hesitated, glanced at him, and made up her mind to go on.
“You see, Dick, it is not as though she had ever——” She paused. She could not bear to look at him.