“Hang it all, Cartice,” said Doring, now thoroughly frightened, “you are not going to be melodramatic about a bit of fooling like that, are you?”
“A bit of fooling?” she echoed, unable to understand him.
“Yes. What else do you suppose it could be?”
“I can only suppose that you love Mrs. Parker. Otherwise how could you have had her in your arms kissing her?”
“Love her? What rubbish. As if a man dreamed of loving every woman he—he found it expedient to kiss.”
She looked at him too amazed to speak. This was a revelation of man nature that was overwhelming. She was unaware until then of the light value many men set upon constancy and even decency in themselves, though all prate loud about them as jewels necessary to the adornment of woman’s character. She was a genuine Galatea, in some respects, expecting to meet gods and shocked to find the world peopled with men and women of very crude minds. She was engaged in the difficult and pathetic task of trying to idealize the actual.
“Why should a man kiss a woman he does not love?” she asked at last.
“Why?” echoed Doring, beginning to think he could flounder out of his dilemma by a little bold bluster. “It’s a habit most of us have got into, I guess. In this case I made up to the old flirt because she so manifestly wanted me to. That was all. I meant nothing by it but to gratify her vanity, which is on short rations just now, I fancy.”
This coarse speech made his wife shiver with shame. The man was surely leaving her nothing to respect in himself. As she was silent he thought he was gaining ground and went on:
“The idea of your being jealous of her! Why, she is old enough to be your mother.”