"
"Well, they won't walk out when they know who the woman was. Jim
was waiting for--he was waiting for--"
He paused a moment. Nobody seemed interested, and so he hastened
to explode the name of the woman.
"Charity Coe! It was Charity Coe Jim was waiting for! They had come
in on the same train, you understand, and yet they didn't come up
the platform together. Why? I ask you. Why didn't they come up
the platform together? Why did Jim come along first and wait? Was
it to see if the coast was clear? Now, I ask you!"
There was respect enough paid to Prissy's narrative now. In fact,
the name of Charity in such a story made the blood of everybody
run cold--not unpleasantly--yet not altogether pleasantly.
Some of the guests scouted Prissy's theory. Mrs. Neff was there,
and she liked Charity. She puffed contempt and cigarette-smoke at
Atterbury, and murmured, sweetly, "Prissy, you're a dirty little
liar, and your long tongue ought to be cut out and nailed up on
a wall."
Prissy nearly wept at the injustice of such skepticism. It was Pet
Bettany, of all people, who came to his rescue with credulity. She
was sincerely convinced. A voluptuary and intrigante herself, she
believed that her own ideas of happiness and her own impulses were
shared by everybody, and that people who frowned on vice were either
hypocrites or cowards.
She could not imagine how small a part and how momentary a part evil
ambitions play in the lives of clean, busy souls like Charity.
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