CHAPTER VI

CLOSING FOR THE DEFENSE

A minute--two--minutes--passed but Noel gave no sign that he had heard the question. The hand that shaded the eyes prevented Floriot from finding in his face any clue to his thoughts. He turned away with a sigh that might have been weariness or disappointment or both and sank slowly into a chair.

At last Noel rose and shook himself slightly as if shaking off a hypnotic spell. His face was a little pale and his eyes had a queer look. He walked over and put his hand on his friend's arm.

"Floriot," he said, gently, "between us there need be no talk of sympathy. You know that I feel your pain almost as much as if it were mine. But I see this thing from a different angle. Even before I heard your story I understood, of course, that she was guilty of grave misconduct. But it seems to me that she has been punished enough--and she has repented!"

Floriot's only reply was an exclamation of scorn and contempt.

"Then why should she have come back?" asked Noel.

"I don't think I told you that her lover is dead," replied Floriot, bitterly. Then he straightened up determinedly: "She shall never come into this house again!"

"She's your wife!" said Noel calmly.

"I won't have her near the boy!"

"He's her boy, too! And whatever becomes of your boy's mother now, my friend, you can take the responsibility."

Floriot stared at him in astonishment and anger.

"I! Responsible! For her?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, you are responsible," was the firm reply. "Who knows what that poor woman may do now--after you have thrown her out!"

Floriot rose and burst out between anger and astonishment:

"Noel, what on earth is the matter with you? This woman has wrecked my home and ruined my life! Haven't I any rights? Wouldn't you have done what I did?"

"Your rights!" sneered his friend, with a scornful laugh. "Do you think that you have the right to sentence the mother of your boy to the life that she will have to lead now? Your own conscience must be singularly clear and your own life wonderfully blameless, my friend! Your rights! Humph! What about your duties? Did you look after your duties as faithfully as you are now looking out for your rights?

"Jacqueline was young and thoughtless--did you guide her and guard her? By your own story you threw her in the way of an attractive man so that you could shift some of your duties on to his shoulders!

"Did you study her heart? You expected her to make you happy--did you study her happiness?" he cried with bitter scorn. "Did you remember that she is far younger than you are? Did your age try to understand her youth and its needs?"

He paused. Floriot had sunk uncertainly back into his chair under the weight of this arraignment.

"You don' t answer! And because she--erred--because she has wounded your vanity by preferring--I'm not defending her!--by preferring another man to you when you did everything you could to make her do it, you throw her out and close your door against her! And you tell me you love her!"

"God knows I love her!" groaned Floriot.

Noel turned away with a short, scornful laugh.

"You loved her!" he exclaimed, contemptuously.

"Noel!"

Noel wheeled on him with flashing eyes.

"I say, it's not true!" he cried. "I tell you, you did not love her! Love is stronger than hate, for nothing can stop it! True love will trample down any obstacle to pardon, to sacrifice! And no one who has not suffered can be sure that he has loved. No, my friend," he went on more calmly, "you didn't love Jacqueline. You loved her grace and her beauty and her charm but it did not blind you to her weakness! If you had really loved her she could have done you no irreparable wrong; for, even when she made this mistake, your love would have found an excuse!"

Floriot sprang up with an angry protest.

"No, no!" he cried. "Any man in the same place would have done what I did! You would--what would you do?"

Noel hesitated a moment. "I don't know----exactly--what I should do," he replied gravely, "because I am a man with a man's limitations. But I know what _you ought_ to do!"

"I will never forgive her! I----"

"Listen to me a minute, Louis!" interrupted his friend, sternly. "Jacqueline is the mother of your son. He is her child and you have dared to separate them for life! Instead of holding out a helping hand to her, you have thrown her out of your house! You might have saved her from her future and you have given her the first push down the hill that leads--we both know where! Wait! Listen to me! You are a public servant. When you plead against a criminal you ask for a verdict and a sentence in proportion to the crime committed. Your wife loved you and gave you a son. She sinned against you and is sorry for her sin, and yet"--his voice rose with bitter passion--"and yet you have sentenced her to misery, despair and death!"

A growing fright was driving the angry gleam from Floriot's eyes as he raised his hand in protest.

"No! No! I----" he began in an altered voice.

"Yes! Yes!" broke in his friend. "What will she do? What will become of her? Have you ever thought of that? She will have a dozen lovers, will she? Who will be responsible? Have you ever thought of that?

"You have not! I can see it in your face! And I suppose you consider yourself an honorable man, a model husband, a blameless father! If you won't do your duty, Floriot, by the living God! I'll do it for you!"

Floriot started up and moved toward his friend with queer, halting steps.

"What--do--you--mean?" came from his lips in barely more than a whisper.

Noel looked squarely into his eyes.

"I mean that your wife shall find in my house the place that you refuse her! My life shall be hers--and I will ask nothing in exchange!"

Floriot halted and stiffened and for a dozen seconds the two men gazed into each other's eyes. Then Floriot spoke slowly and coldly:

"It seems to me, Noel, that you are presuming little beyond the privilege of even a friend."

"In this case I have more than the privilege--of a friend!" was the calm reply, with a note of meaning in the voice.

Floriot continued to stare at him with a mixture of wonder and resentment. Then a sudden thought made him catch his breath with a sharp hiss. His figure relaxed and he took a half-step forward.

"Noel! ... Noel!" he gasped. "Jacqueline! ... She was the woman--you loved!"

The blue eyes did not waver.

"Yes, it was Jacqueline! And," he added, bitterly, "I loved her better, if not more, than you did!..."

In the nerve-wracking night Floriot had exhausted, he thought, every emotion. This last shock numbed him. He groped his way to a chair and with both hands to his head tried to collect his wandering mind and grasp the meaning of Noel's admission.

Noel had loved Jacqueline! This was the woman for whom he had tried to kill himself! His brain reeled dizzily and he stared down at the carpet with unseeing eyes. It put his friend in a strange and almost incomprehensible light. All that he had said and done now took on a different aspect. Noel had loved her! He still loved her and defended her! All that his friend had said, all that Jacqueline had said, his talk with Madame Varenne--all swept back over him with a new meaning! Was he wrong? Should he have obeyed the impulse to forgive when she sobbed at his feet--the impulse that he strangled almost at the cost of reason?... Noel was speaking but he barely heard the words.

"I loved her for years before your marriage," he was saying. "Many and many a time I made up my mind to speak to her but--I loved her more than I could tell her! I was afraid to risk everything on a word. Again and again I went away on my long wanderings, trying to show myself that I wanted nothing more than my freedom. The farther I traveled from St. Pierre the more miserable I grew and I always came back more in love than ever."

There was no grief or pain in his voice. He was still the judge denouncing the culprit.

"Then I began to think that she was falling in love with you! I tried again to take my life in my hands and to tell her I loved, but I couldn't. I ran away again, and this time I made up my mind that I would never come back. I got as far as Messina and bought my ticket for the next east-bound P. & O. Then I deliberately missed the boat and the next one. I couldn't drag myself up the gangplank!

"The next day, without hardly knowing how it happened, I found myself in the railway station, on my way back to France. I had nearly reached her house when I heard of your betrothal!"

He paused for a moment and eyed his friend's bowed figure.

"I suppose you wonder, Louis, why I was not more completely overcome and horrified by your story of your madness. My madness carried me a little farther. I, too, sat up in my room with a revolver one night trying to decide whether I should kill you or myself or both of us!"

Floriot gave no sign that he had heard.

"The old Padre told me once when I was a boy," he went on in the same bitter tone, "there is a line somewhere in the holy writings which says, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' But his friend ought to show that he appreciates the sacrifice!" He paused again for a moment.

"If I had dreamed," he said with stem calmness, "that Jacqueline would be where she is to-night, I would have killed you, my friend, before I tried to kill myself!"

The voice ceased abruptly and Noel turned slowly away. The silence seemed to stir Floriot more than the lashing words. He raised his head wearily.

"What do you think I ought to do?"

"Do! Do!" cried Noel, wheeling, his face blazing with scorn. He walked quickly to the door and paused with his hand on the knob. "I am going to find Jacqueline! Are you coming with me?"

Floriot rose unsteadily--doubt, dread and the faint promise of returning hope in his face. He moved uncertainly over toward his friend with hand outstretched. Noel seized it in an eager, painful grip and they looked into each other's eyes with trembling lips.

Then, without a word, they passed down the hall and out of the house.