Bedient's face clouded. "How did you hear?"
Cairns told, but spared details.
"I hoped it wouldn't get out on account of Mrs. Wordling," Bedient said. "I should have had the instinct to spare her from any such comments. I didn't know the laws of the park. It was a perfect night. We talked by the fountain. She was the first to suggest that we recross the street—and there we were—locked in."
Cairns asked several questions. Once he started impatiently to say that Mrs. Wordling had nothing to lose, but he caught himself in time. He saw that Bedient had been handled a bit, and had only a vague idea that he was embroiled in a scandal, the sordidness of which was apt to reach every ear but the principals'. At all events, the old Bedient was restored; in fact, if it were possible, he was brightened at one certain angle. Cairns had been unable to forbear this question:
"But, Andrew, who suggested going across to the park?"
"I can't just say," Bedient answered thoughtfully. "You see we smelled mignonette, and followed a common impulse. You should have seen the night to understand…. I say, David, can I do anything to straighten this out for Mrs. Wordling?"
"Only ignore it," Cairns said hastily. "I'll nip it—wherever it comes up. And the next time a woman asks——"
"But I didn't say——"
"The next time you smell mignonette, think of it as a soporific. Just yawn and say you've been working like a fire-horse on the Fourth…. You see, it isn't what happens that gets out to the others, including those we care about, but what is imagined by minds which are not decently policed."
"Crowds are cruel," Bedient mused.