Part 13 (1/2)
”My husband is my lover---my lover is my husband.”
He laughed, as he said:
”It sounds very pretty, but you must admit that it is rather ba.n.a.l.”
”In what way?”
He flecked the ash from his cigar.
”You are too pretty, too charming a woman to be commonplace. Really it spoils you----”
Ignoring his compliments, she persisted.
”Do you mean I am commonplace because I call Kenneth my lover. What other lover should I or any other woman happily married have? I am faithful to him--he is loyal to me.”
He gave a little mocking laugh, and was silent. How she hated him for that laugh! After a pause he said quietly and suggestively:
”I am sure you are faithful to him----”
For a moment she looked at him without speaking, eager to resent the implied imputation on her husband, yet unwilling to give the slanderer the satisfaction of seeing that his thrust had carried home.
Concealing as best she could her growing irritation, she said calmly:
”Don't you suppose _he_ also is faithful to me?”
Again that horrible, cynical smile. Fixing her with his piercing dark eyes, and, in a manner, the significance of which could not escape her, he said:
”Don't seek to know too much, Madam. To paraphrase a famous saying: 'It's a wise woman who knows her own husband.'”
Coloring with anger, she said:
”You mean----”
”Just what I say--that a woman, a wife cannot possibly be sure of her husband's fidelity. Think how different are the conditions. The wife, no matter if her temperament be warm or cold, is always at home, surrounded by prying eyes, rarely beset by temptation. The husband is often away, he goes on business journeys that free him temporarily from the chains which keep him in good behavior. If he is good looking, the women look at him, flirt with him. It is inevitable. The chances are that he succ.u.mbs to the first adventure--no matter how exemplary a husband he may be at home. If he is a man--of unusual character, he pa.s.ses through the fire unscathed; if he is--just a man, he is attracted to the candle like the proverbial moth and sometimes singes his wings----”
She looked at him keenly for a moment as if trying to read on his sphinx-like face if he knew more about Kenneth than he admitted, and then with forced calmness she said:
”In your opinion, Signor Keralio--is my husband a man--of unusual character, or is he--just a man?”
The Italian shrugged his shoulders as he replied deprecatingly:
”My dear madam, just stop and think a moment. Isn't that a rather indiscreet question to put to a man--a man who is a friend of your husband----”
Hotly she turned on him.
”If you are his friend, why do you vilify and slander him behind his back?”
Keralio lifted up his long slender hands in pious protest.
”I vilify--my best friend---- Oh, my dear Mrs. Traynor--you have quite misunderstood me. I am a foreigner. Perhaps it is that I express myself ill.”
She shook her head skeptically. Firmly she said: