Alden turned on him fiercely. "You know more than you say in this matter. You are trying to shield your wife."
"As far as I know, my wife has done nothing wrong. As to Miss Claxton, I have known her only a few months, and that slightly. I see clearly, as you do, that facts point to some underhand dealing on her part. Further, I have been taught from my childhood to distrust anyone who uses hackneyed religious phrases as she does. In spite of all this I believe in her. I cannot conceive of any circumstance that could justify her secrecy and double-dealing; but I believe there is a justification. Is not that about what you feel, too?"
"You speak somewhat evasively, Mr. Durgan. You can surely tell me more about your wife than about Miss Claxton. It was not until I read this message that I knew--what I never could have supposed--that any member of your household could be guilty of any connection with that crime. You must see that it now becomes my positive duty to make the strictest inquiry."
"Why--if Miss Claxton does not wish it? If she was, through your exertions, acquitted, she has, as you know, suffered the penalty of the crime ten times over. If she prefers to continue that pain and ignominy rather than allow you to again open the inquiry, what right have you, as her friend and agent, to reopen it?"
"I owe a higher allegiance--to the law of my country, and the law of my God."
"And when these laws conflict, I presume you would wish to obey the latter? My notion is that Miss Claxton's conduct indicates such a conflict." Durgan's voice was still hard and cold.
"I should need to be assured of such contradiction."
"Are you not willing to give her the benefit of the presumption?"
There is not a man on earth who is content to be alone. Durgan, recently horror-stricken at the thought of the part his wife might have played, realized how little reason he had to feel such blind confidence in anyone whom he had the right to love, and envied Alden his opportunity for faith. Nothing like starvation to give a man a clear sight of another's luxuries and corresponding duties.
"In the war," he added, "we Southerners had to learn to trust out and out whom we trusted at all."
"That Miss Claxton is doing what she conceives to be right, I have no doubt," said Alden, stiffly.