d for her, and she thinks wrong. She's bound to, being what she is.
Now, when an ordinary man marries that sort of woman there's certain to
be trouble."

He paused, pondering. "My wife's a dear, good, little woman," he said
presently; "she's the best little woman in the world for me; but I dare
say to outsiders, she's a very ordinary little woman. Well, you know, I
don't call myself a remarkably good man, even now, and I wasn't a good
man at all before she married me. D'you mind my talking about myself like
this?"

"No." She tried to keep herself sincere. "No. I don't think I do."

"You do, I'm afraid. I don't much like it myself. But, you see, I'm
trying to help you. You said you wanted to understand, didn't you?"

"Yes. I want to understand."

"Well, then, I'm not a good man, and your husband is. And yet, I'd no
more think of leaving my dear little wife for another woman than I would
of committing a murder. But, if she'd been 'too good' for me, there's
no knowing what I mightn't have done. D'you see?"

"I see. You're trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband
left me."

"Your fault? No. It was hardly your _fault_, Mrs. Majendie."

He meditated. "There's another thing. You good women are apt to run away
with the idea that--that this sort of thing is so tremendously important
to us. It isn't. It isn't."

"Then why behave as if it were?"

"We don't. That's your mistake. Ten to one, when a man's once married
and happy, he doesn't think about it at all. Of course, if he isn't
happy--but, even then, he doesn't go thinking about it all day long. The
ordinary man doesn't. He's got other things to attend to--his business,
his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are _the_
important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up
his time."

"I see. I see. The woman doesn't count."

"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the
woman may _be_ his religion, his superstition. In your husband's case it
certainly was so."

Her face quivered.

"Of course," he said, "what beats you is--how a man can love his wife
with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her."

"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once,
long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn't understand."

"Well--well, it depends on what one calls unfaithfulness. Some men are
brutes, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about Walter