His LEAVING Zoie, and his "losing" her, as these would-be
comedians expressed it, were two separate and distinct things in
his mind, and he felt an almost irresistible desire to make this
plain to all concerned.
But no sooner did he open his lips to do so, than a picture of
Zoie in all her child-like pleading loveliness, arose to dissuade
him. He could imagine his dinner companions all pretending to
sympathise with him, while they flayed poor Zoie alive. She
would never have another chance to be known as a respectable
woman, and compared to most women of his acquaintance, she WAS a
respectable woman. True, according to old- fashioned standards,
she had been indiscreet, but apparently the present day woman had
a standard of her own. Alfred found his eye wandering round the
table surveying the wives of his friends. Was there one of them,
he wondered, who had never fibbed to her husband, or eaten a
simple luncheon unchaperoned by him? Of one thing he was certain,
there was not one of them so attractive as Zoie. Might she not
be forgiven, to some extent, if her physical charms had made her
a source of dangerous temptation to unprincipled scoundrels like
the one with whom she had no doubt lunched? Then, too, had she
not offered at the moment of his departure to tell him the "real
truth"? Might this not have been the one occasion upon which she
would have done so? "She seemed so sincere," he ruminated, "so
truly penitent.
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