Have you committed adultery?"

"My God! Selma, you don't understand."

"It is an easy question to answer, yes or no?"

"I forgot myself, Selma. I was drunk and crazy. I ask your pardon."

She shook her head coldly. "I shall have nothing more to do with you. I
cannot live with you any longer."

"Not live with me?"

"Would you live with me if it were I who had forgotten myself?"

"I think I would, Selma. You don't understand. I was a brute. I have
been wretched ever since. But it was a slip--an accident. I drank too
much, and it happened. I love you, Selma, with all my heart. I have
never been false to you in my affection."

"It is a strange time to talk of affection. I went away for a week, and
in my absence you insulted me by debauchery with a creature like that.
Love? You have no conception of the meaning of the word. Oh no, I shall
never live with you again."

Babcock clinched his palms in his distress and walked up and down. She
stood pale and determined looking into space. Presently he turned to her
and asked with quiet but intense solicitude, "You don't mean that you're
going to leave me for one fault, we being husband and wife and the
little girl in her grave? I said you don't understand and you don't. A