“Do not misunderstand me. If I wish to defend my friend, I must know how the attack might come, I must have my eyes open. And then—of course, it all depends on whether you are happy here.”
Brent smiled.
“If you say that I may stay, I stay. Such a second chance does not often come to a man. And now—I’ll tell you.”
“Everything,” she said with a quick look at him.
“Everything.”
He found the making of that confession far easier than he had thought. On his first day in Beaucourt he had given her mere hints, sketched a vague outline, but now he drew in every detail, withholding nothing, painting his life’s picture with a simplicity and a sincerity begotten of the war. He had lived two years in an English prison, having been convicted of fraud—but the fraud had been of another man’s making. Brent had trusted people; he was good-natured; he had left all the legal details of the adventure to the other man.
“Of course I was to blame,” he said; “I was just as responsible as he was; I ought not to have gone about in blinkers. I abetted his swindling because I did not take the trouble to find it out. My wife knew it all the time; she was one of those women who are mad to make a show. I never forgave her that. When I came out of prison the war had started, and I had my chance. But after the war—there was nothing. Do you wonder that I had a horror of going back?”
“What a tragedy!” she said; “just your good nature.”
He glanced at Manon.
“One ought not to be too good-natured. But for that disgrace—and the truth of it—I’m free.”