The Austrian's face remained serious.
"I am of the religion of my country," he said.
"Eh?" said Stainton. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
"Not at all. Please." Von Klausen waived religious immunity. "I govern myself one way, but I do not object to hear the reasons why other people should choose other ways. Your way—your American way of divorce—is one of the peculiarities of your great nation, and so I studied it much while I lived there. If you permit, sir, to say it: the figures do not well bear out the boast that the American husband is the best husband. So, Mrs. Stainton?"
"But he is, just the same," protested Muriel.
"What do the figures show?" asked Jim.
"That two divorces are granted to wives to every one granted husbands."
"With all the respect to the best wife in the world," chuckled Stainton, as he again patted Muriel's hand, "that is largely due to the fact that the average American is so good a husband that, innocent as he may be, he pretends to be the guilty party."
Von Klausen's eyes twinkled shrewdly.
"Is it not a little," he enquired, "because the disgrace of being judged a guilty husband is easier to bear than the ridicule that is involved in being unable to keep the love of one's wife?"