He was not sure what she ought to do
when she learned it. He was sure that what she would do would be
the one right thing.
Yet he realized from her placid manner of parrying his threats at
her husband that she still loved the wretch and trusted him. It was
up to Jim to tell her what he knew about Cheever. He felt that he
ought to. Yet how could he?
It was hideous that she should sit there smiling tolerantly at
a critic of her infernal husband as serenely as a priestess who
is patient with an unenlightened skeptic.
It was atrocious that Cheever should be permitted to prosper with
this scandal unrebuked, unpunished, actually unsnubbed, accepting
the worship of an angel like Charity Coe and repaying it with black
treachery! To keep silent was to co-operate in the evil--to pander
to it. Dyckman thought it was hideous. The word he thought was
"rotten"!
He actually opened his mouth to break the news. His voice mutinied.
He could not say a word.
Something throttled him. It was that strange instinct which makes
criminals of every degree feel that no crime is so low but that
tattling on it is a degree lower.
Dyckman tried to assuage his self-contempt by the excuse that Charity
was not in the mood or in the place where such a disclosure should
be made. Some day he would tell her and then ask permission to kill
the blackguard for her.
The train had scuttered across many a mile while he meditated the
answer to the latest riddle.
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