For he had promised Judith his wife to keep
close to the children. What would she think of him if she knew?
Judith had been a broad-minded woman, sensible, big-hearted. But she never
would have stood for this. Once, he recollected, she had helped a girl
friend to divorce her husband, a drunkard who ran after chorus girls. But
that had been quite different. There the wife had been innocent and had
done it for her children. Laura was guilty, she hadn't a child, she was
already planning to marry again. And then what, he asked himself. "From bad
to worse, very likely. A woman can't stop when she's started downhill." His
eye was caught by the picture directly before him on the wall--the one his
wife had given him--two herdsmen with their cattle high up on a shoulder of
a sweeping mountain side, tiny blue figures against the dawn. It had been
like a symbol of their lives, always beginning clean glorious days. What
was Laura beginning?
"Well," he demanded angrily, as he began to jerk off his clothes, "what can
I do about it? Try to keep her from re-marrying, eh? And suppose I
succeeded, how long would it last? She wouldn't stay here and I couldn't
keep her. She'll be independent now--her looks will be her bank account.
There'd be some other chap in no time, and he might not even marry her!" He
tugged ferociously at his boots. "No, let well enough alone!"
He finished undressing, opened the window, turned out the gas and got into
bed.
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