"Oh, please don't think I'm blaming them. I should do exactly the same,
in their case."
"They're really not half bad, you know," he tried to explain. "Mother's
an awfully decent sort, and so is Di. Aggie's a bit cattish. But then
she'll soon be married. Fellow named Jenkins, in the Guards. And then,"
he added, irrelevantly, "you're an American."
"Which is another disadvantage."
"No," he said, with emphasis. "The other way round when it comes to
a--a--" He stumbled at the word, but faced it eventually: "When it comes
to a divorce, you know."
She looked at him mistily. "No, I don't know. Aren't a divorced
Englishwoman and a divorced American in very much the same position?"
He hastened to reassure her. "Oh, Lord, no. Not in England they wouldn't
be. A divorced Englishwoman--well, she's in rather a hole, you know;
whereas a divorced American woman--that's natural."
"I see," she responded, slowly. "It's not considered quite so bad."
"Oh, not half so bad. One expects an American woman to be divorced--or
something."
She couldn't be annoyed with him because he was so honest and ingenuous.
She merely said, "So they'd think me the rule rather than the
exception."
"They'd just think you were American, and let it go at that. Besides,"
he continued, earnestly, "when a woman's only been married in
America--"
"She's been hardly married at all. Is that what they'd think in
England?"
"Well, if they'd ever seen the chap around--But when they haven't, you
know--"
"They can't believe in him."
"Oh, I don't say that. But--well, they wouldn't think anything about
him."
She shifted her ground slightly. "But you'd think about him, wouldn't
you?"
"Me? Why should _I_?"
"Because I'd married him before I'd married you--for one thing."
"Oh, but I shouldn't go into that, you know. That would be over and done
with."
"Would it?"
"Well, wouldn't it?"
She mused silently, while the little girl with the bare legs continued
to croon to her doll with a kind of chant:
"Dors, mon enfant, dors.... Ta mère ne reviendra plus ce soir.... Elle
dîne avec le beau monsieur que tu as vu.... Elle te dira bonne nuit
demain.... Dors; sois sage--et dors"
"Even if it were over and done with," Edith said at last, "the fact
would remain--supposing I married you--that your wife had had a life in
which you possessed no share--a very living life, I assure you--and that
her memories of that life were perhaps the most vital thing about her."
"Oh, but I say!" he protested. "That's the very reason I'm so fond of
you. I can see all that already. I shouldn't interfere with it, you
know. It's what makes the difference between you and other women. It's
like the difference between--" He sought for a simile. "It's like the
difference between a book that's been written and printed, and has
something in it, and a silly blank book."
Her eyes filled with tears. "I wonder if you have the least idea of what
you're saying?"
He sought for a more effective figure of speech. "If you were walking
about your place, and found something wounded, you'd want to take it
home and tend it, wouldn't you, till you'd put it to rights again? And
the more you tended it the fonder of it you'd be. But you wouldn't stop
to ask whether a boy had thrown a stone at it or whether it had been
attacked by its mate. You'd let all that alone--and just tend it."
Her tears were coursing freely now beneath her veil. "Is that really the
way you feel about me?"
He grew apologetic. "Oh, I don't mean any Good Samaritan business, don't
you know? If I could look after you a bit you'd do the same by me. I'm
thinking of that, too. Look here," he pursued, confidentially, but
coloring; "I'll tell you something, if you won't think me an ass. I
could have married two or three girls--oh, more than that!--if I'd
wanted to. But I could see what they were after. It wasn't me--not by a
long shot. It was the place--Foljambe--it's really quite a decent place,
you know--right in the shires--and the hunting. They'd have thought it
awful luck to have to clear out of England every year, just when the
hunting begins--and stick in this bally hole--or go to Egypt. But you
wouldn't." As she said nothing for the minute, he insisted, "Would you,
now?"