Excepting the people with whom he came in contact at the
hospital, he had no society but that of Biffen. The realist
visited him once a week, and this friendship grew closer than it
had been in the time of Reardon's prosperity. Biffen was a man of
so much natural delicacy, that there was a pleasure in imparting
to him the details of private sorrow; though profoundly
sympathetic, he did his best to oppose Reardon's harsher
judgments of Amy, and herein he gave his friend a satisfaction
which might not be avowed.
'I really do not see,' he exclaimed, as they sat in the garret
one night of midsummer, 'how your wife could have acted
otherwise. Of course I am quite unable to judge the attitude of
her mind, but I think, I can't help thinking, from what I knew of
her, that there has been strictly a misunderstanding between you.
It was a hard and miserable thing that she should have to leave
you for a time, and you couldn't face the necessity in a just
spirit. Don't you think there's some truth in this way of looking
at it?'
'As a woman, it was her part to soften the hateful necessity; she
made it worse.
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