The latter was again on the verge of asking his name, when Messner
remarked:
"This Dr. Womble, I've heard he was very handsome, and - er - quite
a success, so to say, with the ladies."
"Well, if he was, he finished himself off by that affair,"
Haythorne grumbled.
"And the woman was a termagant - at least so I've been told. It
was generally accepted in Berkeley that she made life - er - not
exactly paradise for her husband."
"I never heard that," Haythorne rejoined. "In San Francisco the
talk was all the other way."
"Woman sort of a martyr, eh? - crucified on the cross of
matrimony?"
The doctor nodded. Messner's gray eyes were mildly curious as he
went on:
"That was to be expected - two sides to the shield. Living in
Berkeley I only got the one side. She was a great deal in San
Francisco, it seems."
"Some coffee, please," Haythorne said.
The woman refilled his mug, at the same time breaking into light
laughter.
"You're gossiping like a pair of beldames," she chided them.
"It's so interesting," Messner smiled at her, then returned to the
doctor.
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