Adam pressed the man’s shoulder again and walked back across the room. “Do you have any idea,” he said, “why she’d do a thing like this? I mean, it was pretty obvious that you were better to her than most husbands are to their wives. And, like I say, she seemed to be happy. I mean, everything seemed to be fine!”

Griffin was silent. “I think—” he said.

“Yes?”

“I think I can maybe guess part of the reason.”

“Oh? What is it you think?”

“Well,” Griffin said, “I’ve never told anyone this, but I’m going to tell you, Adam. You—understand things. I seen that right away. So I’m going to tell you this secret. When I first met Vy in New York, she was—well, I’ll be honest. She was what they call a professional woman. But not like the others. No. It’s hard to put, but—Vy was a good person. Except, she had this itch, and there wasn’t nothing she could do about it. Doctors got a name for it, maybe you heard. They can’t cure it alone no more than they can cure every kind of headache, see, because it isn’t like with a broken leg or a case of diphtheria or something. No; they got to have help, from the patient. But Vy couldn’t believe in all that talk, she didn’t think she was really sick. She thought—well, that God was punishing her for something, and that it was His curse. And with an attitude like that, there wasn’t nothing a body could do for her. Before, I mean. Before I met her.”

“Go on,” Adam said.

“I never told anybody this.”

“I know that, Sam, and I appreciate your faith in me. It goes without saying that I’ll respect the confidence.”

The big man still did not move. His back was to Adam. “Well, we met, like I said, and I fell in love with her. Underneath all the city hardness, I saw there was a fine woman. It’s my business to know these things about people. And I knew. It took a long time to convince her, but finally I did, and we got married. She told me she was happy and wouldn’t cheat on me. And she never, either. For five years we was just as happy as two pigs in the sunshine.”

There was a silence.

“Well, it certainly beats me,” Adam said. “You say you’ve got a theory?”

“I think so,” Griffin said. “The way I figure it, she must of got into some trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Man trouble,” Griffin said. “Some fella or other must of caught her at a weak moment. And she just, like they say, reverted back. What do you think, Adam? You think that might be it?”