Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/199

 couldn't imagine him setting that above everything else; and now that I've seen it with my own eyes, I understand it less than ever. It seems so actually impossible for my father to put that woman we found in that flat above honor and decency and mother—and me and every one else, Gregg. But he has!"

"No, he hasn't!" Gregg denied so suddenly that his voice was louder than he intended; and he looked about in alarm to see if he had been heard by people passing on the other side of the street. Marjorie looked too and, though they gave no sign, she asked in a whisper which was almost a gasp, "How hasn't he?"

Gregg gazed down at her and she, glancing up and seeing his face, cried in a whisper, "You look at me like Mr. Rinderfeld when he said I couldn't know about father because no man has ever told me so much as half the truth about—men!" And Gregg, in that flash, caught the power of Rinderfeld over her; he realized that, while Billy had been trying to lead her back through the break in the barrier about the tree of knowledge, Rinderfeld, finding her within it, had set himself to guide her in the way she was bound to go, with him or without. For return to innocence is, of course, impossible; no longer was she to be satisfied with pretty fictions and child's tales of what lay within the wall; she had seen something of it for herself; and if, when she demanded understanding, her friends merely told her to bind up her eyes and forget, why they simply played her into Rinderfeld's hand.

"The half of the truth about men which don't know, Marjorie," Gregg said, as they both halted, staring at each other, "isn't what men do; you know, every woman knows what men do; the half don't realize is how little we think of it. You've just shown