This finished, he
sat down and leaned his head in his hands in confused thought.
To his clear sense his partner's act seemed monstrous. He had been
brought up to respect the marriage bond, and to protect and honor
women. The illicit was impossible to his candid soul. All the men he had
associated with had been respecters of marriage, though some of them
were obscene--thoughtlessly, he always believed--and now Jim, his chum,
had come between a man and his wife! With Estelle in his mind as the
type of purity, he could not understand how a wife could be the
faithless creature Blanche Burke seemed. Her weakness opened a new world
to him. He could not trust himself to speak to her.
The bubbling of the kettle aroused him, and he rose and went about
getting supper. After a few moments he felt able to ask, with formal
politeness:
"Won't you lay off your things, Mrs. Burke?"
She made no reply, but sat like an old gypsy, crouched low, with
brooding face. She, too, was wordless. She had made the curious mistake
of looking to Bailey for justification.
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