Wesley removed his hat and sat on a bench.

"Katharine," he said solemnly, "nobody ever knows how to take you."

"Would it be asking too much to take me for having a few grains of plain
common sense?" she inquired. "You've known all this time that Comstock
got what he deserved, when he undertook to sneak in an unused way across
a swamp, with which he was none too familiar. Now I should have thought
that you'd figure that knowing the same thing would be the best method
to cure me of pining for him, and slighting my child."

"Heaven only knows we have thought of that, and talked of it often, but
we were both too big cowards. We didn't dare tell you."

"So you have gone on year after year, watching me show indifference to
Elnora, and yet a little horse-sense would have pointed out to you that
she was my salvation. Why look at it! Not married quite a year. All his
vows of love and fidelity made to me before the Almighty forgotten in a
few months, and a dance and a Light Woman so alluring he had to lie and
sneak for them. What kind of a prospect is that for a life? I know men
and women. An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar;
both are born and not made. One cannot change to the other any more than
that same old leopard can change its spots. After a man tells a woman
the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast,
and mountain high. The desolation they bring in their wake overshadows
anything I have suffered completely. If he had lived six months more I
should have known him for what he was born to be. It was in the blood
of him. His father and grandfather before him were fiddling, dancing
people; but I was certain of him. I thought we could leave Ohio and come
out here alone, and I could so love him and interest him in his work,