The priest bent his head gravely.
"Sí, señor, very rash and very wicked."
The big salesman straightened in his chair and with outraged eyes regarded the cleric.
"Wicked! How do you get that answer? Wicked to get rid of an empty marriage? Call that wicked? For Dolores to leave a man who shows by every move he makes that he doesn't give a damn about her! Don't your reason tell you it would be damn sight wickeder for her to remain in such a shameful connection with a man she detests?"
Father Benicio sat measuring the salesman, with small black eyes.
"Do you gauge shame and honor and duty purely by the personal pleasure one receives in obeying one's vows and obligations, Señor Strawbridge?"
"I'm not measuring anything. I'm stating facts."
"Does it cease to be your duty to attend to the business of your company, merely because it would be pleasanter to run off with your customer's wife?"
The drummer lifted a hand and laid it flat on the table.
"Look here, you can cut out that line of talk. She's not his wife. He's given her up. And, besides, folks do marry to make life pleasanter on the whole. Yes, they do. You know they do. And if their life on the whole is unpleasanter after marriage than before, why, then they've failed. They are not a going concern. They are not declaring any dividends, and the only thing to do is to quit; to get a divorce and quit."