Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/223

 One day he learned about the final break between Madeleine and her husband and her elopement with Beaulieu. Beaulieu told him the story.

"I was much younger," he said, "and I believed all that she told me. I was not in love with her then, but she had touched my deepest sympathies. One night I heard them quarreling. Presently she began to scream as if she was being beaten. The next thing I knew she was hammering on my door with both fists, calling upon me to save her. At the same time I could hear her husband saying in a hoarse, terrible voice: 'I shall not forgive you for this! I shall not be able to forgive you.'

"I unlocked my door and opened it.

"I tried to pacify them. We were all in our nightgowns. We must have looked ridiculous.

"Madeleine flung herself into my arms. My embarrassment was pitiable. I tried to push her away from me. She only clung the closer . . . I give you my word of honor, Edward, that I had never so much as spoken a single word of love to her. Now I listened in a horrified silence while she in her rage and in her determination to hurt him told her husband that for a long time we had been lovers.

"At that awful moment I admired my old friend immensely. He looked for a space like a man