"No one shall disturb us."
"It isn't business." Then, after a moment's silence, "It's my wife. She has betrayed me."
"Your wife betrayed you?" Gordon, as in his bewilderment he echoed the words, recalled a woman with a dainty figure, a small, sphinx-like mouth, full cheeks devoid of color, and black hair. He had never been at Paul's house, but he had been introduced to her, and he had frequently seen her and her little girl driving in her victoria, a picture of up-to-date fastidiousness. At the time of her marriage she had been called the prettiest girl in Benham. She was the daughter of a St. Louis contractor with a reputation for executive ability, who had moved to Benham in her childhood to become the president of a car-building company. Paul's friends had intimated that he had gone rather out of his way to marry her. Certainly it had been considered a brilliant match for her.
"Yes. It's a pretty kettle of fish, as you'll appreciate when you hear the story; a hopeless case so far as our living together is concerned. I've come to you for advice and to talk it over, though she and I threshed out the situation four days ago.
"May I smoke? Thanks. You don't here, I know; but I go from cigar to cigar to keep my nerves straight, for I'm still dazed, and I haven't slept much."
"It's ghastly," murmured Gordon.
"Now that I look back I suppose I ought to have realized that she never really cared for me. Perhaps the gradual, unconscious perception of that reacted on me. I fell dead in love with her looks, and would have worshipped the ground she trod on had she proved what I thought her to be. As it is, I'm humiliated, angry, disgusted, all at sea. But I can see that we should never be happy together again. Love in the true sense is over on both sides. I tell you this, Gordon, to begin with. You haven't heard anything?"
"Not a word."
"I thought it likely they had copied the item from the Newport into the Benham newspapers. Five nights ago I popped at a man in my house with a revolver—a long shot—just as he was escaping over the balcony outside my wife's apartment, and missed. At the moment I would have given half my fortune to kill him. I dare say, it's just as well I didn't. There would have been a bigger scandal. It was one o'clock, and someone who heard the noise—servants, I know not who—talked, and two days later there appeared in one of the newspapers an allusion to the mysterious midnight pistol shot on the Howard place. A reporter called on me; I declined to see him, but my butler, who can be trusted, had instructions to say I was shooting cats. That's all the public knows as yet. Here's a nice problem for the women's debating clubs: A man discovers his wife's lover in his place; ought he to shoot him like a rat on the spot, or accept the situation for what it is worth, just as he has to accept a death in the family, a fire, or any other visitation of Providence? Eh?" Paul gave a short laugh. "Of course the primitive man shot every time. But we can remember one husband who did shoot and who killed, and that all the exquisite people and some of the wise people shook their heads and declared he ought to have thought of his daughters. There was a world-wide scandal, and after the funeral we were told that the husband had always been a crank, in proof of which he died later in an insane asylum, while his wife has hovered on the outskirts of the smart set ever since as a sort of blessed martyr to the rigor of conventions. No, my dear fellow, the only decent thing for me to do now is to compromise myself deliberately with some common woman, so as to give my wife the chance to obtain a divorce from me. That is the duty of the gallant modern husband, according to the nicest and latest fashionable code."
"You will do nothing of the kind, Paul."