It broke his heart to see her meek. All the fire of pride was gone out of her. She was a whipped cur thing, and he could not put out his hand to caress her.
Something in him, a god or a fiend, tried to persuade him that she was not to blame, that she had been the prey of currents stronger than herself. But whether the god or the fiend whispered him this, the other of the two spirits denied it as a contemptible folly.
According to the law, women, as soon as they married, lost all rights to their souls, wills, properties, and destinies: yet if men were to forgive their wives for infidelities no home would be safe. This new-fangled mawkishness toward the wicked must have a limit somewhere.
He had to go into his library for a lawbook that he had brought with him on an earlier visit to his home—“visit” seemed the nice, exact word, for he was only a visitor now. Harry Chalender was the master of the house.
RoBards expected to find the usurper in a delirium. But Chalender was out of the cloud for the moment. With a singularly fresh and boyish cheer, he sang out:
“Hello, David! How’s my old crony? Don’t let me keep you out of your shop. Go ahead and work and don’t mind me. I’m pretty sick, I suppose, or I’d take myself out of your way. Forgive me, won’t you?”
He asked forgiveness for a possible inconvenience, but kept in his black heart the supposed secret of his treachery! Yet something compelled RoBards to laugh and say that he was to make himself at home and feel right welcome. The dishonest glance he cast toward Chalender was met with a look of smiling honesty that reminded David of some lines he had heard the English actor Kean deliver at the theatre:
“My tables—meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile and smile and be a villain.”
Yet he smiled himself, and felt that many a villain was more the hero than he. He hurried out of the room, fleeing from the helpless sick man who smiled and had no conscience to trouble him.