“You married her! You were never divorced from mother!”
“Oh, yes, I was! Do you think I’m a bigamist? I got a divorce from your mother under the Japanese laws——”
“Mother never knew about it.”
“I can’t help that.”
“The divorce laws of Japan, Nathan,” explained Madelaine with a faint smile, “are very simple. When a man grows tired of his wife in Japan he may dispense with her by merely walking out and leaving her, first informing the police to that effect, I believe. Then he contracts a new marriage by going to live with his paramour and duly informing the police to that effect also, giving his new residence. One of the Y. W. C. A. girls explained it to me.”
Johnathan ignored Madelaine. He went on:
“I got a divorce from your mother under the laws of Japan. I married what I supposed was a woman who’d be the wife I deserved—after all I’d been through back in the States. But she was like all women. I lived with her just two days. I was fool enough to intrust my bank account to her. The third day she was missing and so was the money. I’ve never got trace of either, since. I had to take a job.”
Nathan flushed again with the new insult to Madelaine. But for an instant his anger was arrested by the announcement that his father had been flimflammed by an adventuress.
“Edith has six children now,” he essayed, after a painful moment.
But Johnathan was not interested in the fact that Edith had six children. He went on in the same whine: