“Which is better, Mrs. Polhemus,” I asked, with a calmness I marveled at afterwards, “to love dishonesty or to dishonestly love?”
“Is this a riddle?” she said, though not removing her eyes from you.
“I suppose, since right and wrong are evolutionary,” I rejoined, “that every ethical question is more or less of a conundrum. But the thought in my mind was that there is only nobility in a love so great that it can outlast even wrongdoing.” Then, in my controlled passion, I stabbed her as deeply as I could make words stab. “Compare such a love, for instance, with another of which I have heard,—that of a woman who so valued the world’s opinion that she would not get a divorce from an embezzling husband, because of the social stigma it involved, yet who remarried within a week of hearing of her first husband’s death, because she thought that fact could not be known. Which love is the higher?”
The color blazed up in my mother’s cheeks, as she turned from you to look at me, with eyes that would have killed if they could; and it was her manner, far more than even the implication of my words, which told the rest of the table that my nominally impersonal case was truly a thrust of the knife. A moment’s appalling pause followed, and then, though the fruit was being passed, the hostess broke the terrible spell by rising, as if the time had come for the ladies to withdraw.
When, later, the men followed them, Agnes intercepted me at the door, and whispered, “Oh, doctor, it was magnificent! I was so afraid Maizie would break down if—I never dreamed you could do it so splendidly. You’re almost as much of a love as papa! It will teach the cat to let Maizie alone! Now, do you want to be extra good?”
“So long as you don’t want any more vitriol-throwing,” I assented, smiling. “Remember that a hostess deserves some consideration.”
“I told Mrs. Granger that you did it at my request, and there wasn’t a woman in the room who didn’t want to cheer. We all love Maizie, and hate Mrs. Polhemus; and it isn’t a bit because you geese of men think she’s handsome and clever, either. Poor Maizie wanted to be by herself, and went out on the veranda. I think she’s had time enough, and that it’s best for some one to go to her. Won’t you slip out quietly?”
I nodded, and instantly she spoke aloud of the moon, and we went to the French window on the pretense of looking at it, where, after a moment, I left her. At first I could not discover you, the vines so shadowed your retreat; and when I did, it was to find you with bowed head buried in your arms as they rested on the veranda rail. The whole attitude was so suggestive of grief that I did not dare to speak, and moved to go away. Just as I turned, however, you looked up, as if suddenly conscious of some presence.
“I did not intend to intrude, Miss Walton, and don’t let me disturb you. I will rejoin”—
“If you came out for the moonlight and quiet, sit down here,” you said, making room for me.