He moved from his chair in this silent room and began to pace slowly to and fro, the weightiness of this subject exercising to the full his power of decision. She was guilty of a misdeed which he felt able to condemn. The original concealment was evil; the continued deception more. Lastly, there was the thought that her love after all had been divided, part for him, part for the child, a discovery which no man in his position could contemplate with serenity. He moved irritably as he thought of it, shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to and fro across the floor.
That a man of Lester’s temperament should consider himself wronged by Jennie merely because she had concealed a child whose existence was due to conduct no more irregular than was involved later in the yielding of herself to him was an example of those inexplicable perversions of judgment to which the human mind, in its capacity of keeper of the honor of others, seems permanently committed. Lester, aside from his own personal conduct (for men seldom judge with that in the balance), had faith in the ideal that a woman should reveal herself completely to the one man with whom she is in love; and the fact that she had not done so was a grief to him. He had asked her once tentatively about her past. She begged him not to press her. That was the time she should have spoken of any child. Now—he shook his head.
His first impulse, after he had thought the thing over, was to walk out and leave her. At the same time he was curious to hear the end of this business. He did put on his hat and coat, however, and went out, stopping at the first convenient saloon to get a drink. He took a car and went down to the club, strolling about the different rooms and chatting with several people whom he encountered. He was restless and irritated; and finally, after three hours of meditation, he took a cab and returned to his apartment.
The distraught Jennie, sitting by her sleeping child, was at last made to realize, by its peaceful breathing that all danger was over. There was nothing more that she could do for Vesta, and now the claims of the home that she had deserted began to reassert themselves, the promise to Lester and the need of being loyal to her duties unto the very end. Lester might possibly be waiting for her. It was just probable that he wished to hear the remainder of her story before breaking with her entirely. Although anguished and frightened by the certainty, as she deemed it, of his forsaking her, she nevertheless felt that it was no more than she deserved—a just punishment for all her misdoings.
When Jennie arrived at the flat it was after eleven, and the hall light was already out. She first tried the door, and then inserted her key. No one stirred, however, and, opening the door, she entered in the expectation of seeing Lester sternly confronting her. He was not there, however. The burning gas had merely been an oversight on his part. She glanced quickly about, but seeing only the empty room, she came instantly to the other conclusion, that he had forsaken her—and so stood there, a meditative, helpless figure.
“Gone!” she thought.
At this moment his footsteps sounded on the stairs. He came in with his derby hat pulled low over his broad forehead, close to his sandy eyebrows, and with his overcoat buttoned up closely about his neck. He took off the coat without looking at Jennie and hung it on the rack. Then he deliberately took off his hat and hung that up also. When he was through he turned to where she was watching him with wide eyes.
“I want to know about this thing now from beginning to end,” he began. “Whose child is that?”
Jennie wavered a moment, as one who might be going to take a leap in the dark, then opened her lips mechanically and confessed:
“It’s Senator Brander’s.”