"I'll never give up trying," Lorraine replied.
"But if your efforts after a time prove fruitless, will persistence be of any avail? Won't it simply make her more irreconcilable and unyielding?"
"You mean will I divorce her--or permit her to obtain a divorce?"
"Most assuredly not!" Lorraine declared. "If _I'm_ not to have her, who belongs to me, none else shall."
"Sort of a dag in the manger business?" Devereux smiled.
"Not at all.--I'm simply keeping what is mine."
"Not exactly--you will be keeping what _was_ yours but is yours no longer."
"If a reconciliation is impossible, I think that you should let her go. What is more, you should make it possible for _her_ to get the divorce."
"Not at all--though that is a minor matter, and wouldn't hurt you in the least if you were to admit it; under the circumstances, you are entitled to break over. However, that is neither here nor there; she can procure a divorce for non-support--if you don't contest it."
"Yes--if I don't contest it!" Lorraine sneered. "One might fancy that you contemplated marrying her yourself, Devereux."
"I don't contemplate marrying her, and you know it," said Devereux imperturbably; "though for my part, I should consider myself very fortunate indeed to win her. But someone else probably _will_ want to marry her, and she may want to marry him--and you will be only the dog in the manger, Lorraine, only the dog in the manger--with the sympathy of not one soul in all the world."
"I don't care for sympathy!" Lorraine exclaimed--"and I shouldn't get it if I did--from you men. You always favor a pretty woman. You all have been against me from the first. You think it was all my fault Amherst had a chance to ingratiate himself."
"They went off together, didn't they--was that my doing?" he demanded.
"Am I responsible for what a low-down dog like Amherst does? Hadn't I a right to presume he wouldn't do it? Hadn't I a right to trust my own wife? Is a husband to be suspicious and suspecting? Isn't he justified in presuming innocence rather than guilt?"
"As a general proposition, yes; varied, however, by the _dramatis personae_--and the circumstances."
"What should I have done?" Lorraine demanded.
"Anything but what you did do," returned Devereux kindly. "But that isn't the question that confronts you now, and is up to you for decision, and which you alone can decide. Don't make another blunder; you can't afford it--and neither can Stephanie." He leaned forward and put his hand on the other's knee. "Consider well, Lorraine. Stephanie and you are young--the world is before you. Make it as easy going for both of you as you can. You are a long time dead, remember."