"Yes. But I don't quite see—You say she was married in September?"
"Yes—the third."
"Well, if you knew she was married then, I don't quite see why you didn't make use of your knowledge before. When I was playing round with her, I mean—of course I, like the brazen idiot I was, didn't write you, but you must have heard—"
"Oh, yes. Well, it was a very funny thing. I didn't remember about having seen her in that place till months afterward; not till the night I heard about the breach of promise business. You see, it was only the barest, vaguest glimpse, there in the City Hall; she didn't even see me and I didn't even remember where I had seen her face before, then. I scarcely thought about it at all, at the time; I was in a great hurry to get to a hearing before some commission or other, and the thing went bang out of my mind. Then, when I read of the breach of promise, it all came back, in one flash! Funny!"
"Yes. It's the kind of humor that appeals to me, I can tell you."
"The man, Jennings, curiously enough, happened to be in McClellan's for a while, once, in the counting department. He left there to become a clerk in some bank. We worked up his end too, a little....
"Harry, I wish you'd tell me one thing," went on James, after a pause.
"Anything I can, James."
"Why on earth, when you found you were getting in deep with that woman, didn't you call on me to do something? You couldn't be so far gone as to think that I wouldn't—"
"Oh, couldn't I? You have no idea of what depths of idiocy I can descend to, if I want.—I don't know—at the time, the more I wanted help the less I could talk of it to any one, and you least of all. The person that gave me the most comfort was Trotty, and he never once mentioned the subject to me, except when I introduced it myself! Yet even so, all through that time, it was you that I really wanted.—Look here, James, if you don't believe me, see what I've been carrying around with me all this time, as a sort of talisman!"