If the boat were sunk by a submarine or a mine, death in the strangling seas would be preferable to any more of this drifting among the strangling problems of a life that held no promise of happiness for her. She felt gagged with the silence imposed upon her by the code in the very face of Kedzie's disloyalty, a disloyalty so loathsome that seeing was hardly believing.
It seemed inconceivable that a man or woman pledged in holy matrimony could ever be tempted to an alien embrace. And yet she knew dozens of people who made a sport of infidelity. Her own husband had found temptation stronger than his pledge. She wondered how long he would be true to Zada, or she to him. Charity had suffered the disgrace of being insufficient for her husband's contentment, and now Jim must undergo the same disgrace with Kedzie. It was a sort of post-nuptial jilt.
Of course Charity had no proof that Kedzie had been more than brazenly indiscreet with Strathdene, but that very indifference to gossip, that willingness to stir up slander, seemed so odious that nothing could be more odious, not even the actual crime.
Besides, Charity found it hard to assume that a woman who held her good name cheap would hold her good self less cheap, since reputation is usually cherished longer than character.
In any case, Charity was smothering. Even Mrs. Noxon's vast drawing-room was too small to hold her and Jim and Kedzie and Strathdene. America was too strait to accommodate that jangling quartet.
She rose abruptly, thrust her hand out to Jim and said:
“Good night, old man. I've got to begin packing.”
“Packing for where? New York?”
“Yes, and then France.”
“I've told you before, I won't let you go.”