Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/178

that second marriage—" After all, could you blame her? Could you blame her no matter what she did? He demanded it aloud of the empty air. "You can't blame her, can you?"

And then, because the near sea seemed to laugh and mock at him, he grew angry, and began to denounce himself. "Who are you to blame her, anyway? You. . . . Why, damn it to hell, you're not so almighty good yourself, remember! You've done things yourself. And without any justification, like she had. Just to be vile. Just to satisfy your lousy low-down vile curiosity!" Crashing-clear as though it were yesterday, a prep school memory came back to him. A house in a sinister street. Himself and two other stealthy, shivering youngsters, creeping there in the night . . . and the sick disillusionment, ugly, intolerable, that had followed. . . . When they left he had turned frantically, and picked up a rock, and hurled it through that leering window . . .

And there were other memories. Not many, but a few. Little dark splotches down the margins of fair pages. . . .

"damn you," he choked. "Why, you're not fit to kiss her shoes. . . . And look! She doesn't ask what you've done, She doesn't care what you've done. 'Love is the only thing that matters.' She loves you. Enough to leave everything and come to you, and tell you—she didn't have to tell you. She could have lied and lied, and you'd have believed every word. But because she wouldn't lie to you, you sit like this, like a smug saint with a halo, and dare to judge her! She was too fine to lie. She wouldn't stoop to that. And here you are . . ."

He pitched sideways and lay face downward on the porch, humbled and penitent. He whispered, barely