"'Why don't you ask your—wife?'"
She laid aside the paper and took off her glasses:
"Very well; failing to obtain the desired information from me, why don't you ask your—wife?"
"I have asked her," he said, in a low voice.
"Oh, I see! Jacqueline also refuses the desired information. So you come to inquire of me. Is that it?"
"Yes, that is it."
"You go behind your wife's back——"
"Don't talk that way, please."
"Indeed! Now, listen very attentively, James, because that is exactly the way I am going to talk to you. And I'll begin by telling you plainly just what you have done. You—and you know what you are—have married clandestinely a young, innocent, inexperienced girl. You, who are not fit to decide the fate of a new-born yellow pup, have assumed the irrevocable responsibility of this girl's future—arranged it yourself in the teeth of the eternal fitness and decency of things! You, James Desboro, a good-for-nothing idler, irresponsible spendthrift, half bankrupt, without ambition, without a profession, without distinction except that you have good looks and misleading manners and a line of ancestors which would make an Englishman laugh.
"When you did this thing you knew you were not fit to tie her shoes. You knew, too, that those who really love her and who might have shielded her except for this—this treachery, had warned you to keep your distance. You knew more than that; you knew that our little Jacqueline had all her life before her; that for the first time in her brief career the world was opening its arms to her; that she was certain to be popular, sure to be welcomed, respected, liked, loved. You knew that now she was going to have her chance; that men of distinction, of attainment, of lofty ideals and irreproachable private lives—men well to do materially, too—men of wealth, ambitious men, forceful men who count, certainly would seek her, surround her, prefer her, give her what she had a right to have—the society of her intellectual peers—the exercise of a free, untrammeled judgment, and, ultimately, the opportunity to select from among real men the man most worthy of such a woman as she is."