"Then you can bet that there was nothing in it, you little goose.... Who was she, anyway?"
"A Mrs. Atherstane. Do you know her?"
"No," said Edgerton; "and you certainly did act like a schoolgirl."
"I know I did, and I was twenty.... I asked him to come, to Hot Springs; she requested him to go to Keno. He took his choice; he had a perfect right to.... And then I wrote him that letter, dismissing him."
"Ought never to have done it, sweetness," said Edgerton gravely. "There are no fetters to hold a man like absolute freedom. He was probably bound to her in various ways, innocently enough, of course; but she was probably lonely and in trouble—and—noblesse oblige. I tell you a young man has to pay for sympathizing with an unhappily married woman! And she usually sees that he does."
Christine sat back, nursing her knees, eyes downcast.
"He was right," she said. "She was his friend."
"Perhaps he was more right than you realize, Christine. When a man's man friend is battered and used up, the man still clings to him—anyway, until he borrows money; but when his woman friend becomes slightly the worse for wear, he is inclined to discard her as naïvely as he would a worn-out coat. That is the rule—romance to the contrary.... Inwood proved the exception, that's all."
"Yes," said the girl in a low voice.
"He proved the exception to me, too," said Edgerton, smiling.