As it happened I had better have kept quiet. Vio sat upright, all the force of her anger turned upon me. "Has this girl been anything to you?" "Yes, madam; a mother." In her endeavor to control herself Vio uttered a hard pant, eying the girl up and down. "Oh? Indeed? You’re young to be ... a mother!" "Only a little younger than you, madam; and not half so beautiful. Madam knows that any woman worth her salt is mother to any man down on his luck. I don’t care who he is, or who she is." "Thank you for the information. I hope Mr. Harrowby has appreciated your maternal care." "Well, he did and he didn’t, madam. Just when I thought he was going to buck up he—he cleared out, and I thought he must be dead. Now, I find that—" "That he’s alive. If you had come to me I could have told you that—that clearing out was his specialty. You might say he had a genius for it, if you weren’t compelled to call it by another name." I took a long stride toward her. "Vio, do you mean anything by that?" "What should I mean but—but the fact? You’re a mystery to me, Billy, just as you’ve evidently been to—to this young lady. At the very minute when we hope, as she so picturesquely puts it, that you’re going to buck up, you—you clear out. You must have a marvelous eye for your opportunities in that respect. That’s why I say it is like genius. No one who didn’t have a genius for clearing out, still to call it that, could so neatly have seen his chance at Bourg-la-Comtesse!" "Vio!" I don’t know what I was about to do, because with my own shout ringing in my ears I became aware that Lydia had caught me by the arm. "Oh, kid, please don’t!" "Yes; let him." Vio’s face was strained upward toward me, but otherwise she hadn’t moved. "Men who run away from other men are always quick to strike women." My arm fell. I bent till my face was close to hers. "When did I ever run away?" Her hand was thrown out in the imperious gesture of dismissal I had seen two or three times already. "Please, Billy! We won’t go into that. You’ll—you’ll spare me." "Vio, you believe _that_?" She inclined her head slowly. "That I was a—a coward—a deserter?" She inclined her head again. "And that I—" the whole plan spread itself out before me—"that I pretended to commit suicide in order to cover up my tracks?" Once more she bowed her head relentlessly. "You _believe_ that?" "Billy, I know it. Every one knows it. I’ve stood by you right up to now. But now—" she rose with a kind of majesty from which I backed away—"now that you’ve brought this woman here, into my house, where I’ve been fighting your battles— Oh, Billy, what kind of a man are you to have—to have a wife like me?" I made no attempt to respond to this. I could only stand amazed and speechless. Perhaps a minute had gone by, perhaps two or three before I found myself able to say: "All right, Vio. Since it’s—since it’s that way, and with all the other things—"