“He was killed, horribly. His pitiful wife! Abbie has been here and she is inconsolable. He was her idol––not a very pretty one, but idols are not often pretty. It’s too terribly bad, isn’t it?”
Davidge’s bewildered silence was his epitaph for Jake. Even though he were dead, one could hardly praise him, though, now that he was dead, Davidge felt suddenly that he must have been indeed the first and the eternal victim of his own qualities.
Jake had been a complainer, a cynic, a loafer always from his cradle on––indeed, his mother used to say that he nearly kicked her to death before he was born.
Mamise had hated and loathed him, but she felt now that Abbie had been righter than she in loving the wretch who had been dowered with no beauty of soul or body.
She waited for Davidge to say something. After a long silence, she asked:
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t say anything about poor Jake.”
“I––I don’t know what to say.”