Roger felt his anger rising, and stood up, as if by so standing he could reach the calm escaping him.
"I don't suppose you think I tried at all."
"I didn't say you didn't try. You asked me if I felt it and I said I did."
"Well, have you any suggestion to make?" He might have been asking an accused witness to submit proof of his innocence.
"No. I haven't any. Have you?"
"We can't go on like this. We claim to be reasonable human beings and we might as well recognize the truth. We—" but the words were so final; like bullets to say—"we can separate"—that Roger temporized. "We must find what it's all about and try to straighten it out or——" Roger shrugged and turned away. "I have tried to find out what it's all about."
"So have I." Anne went calmly on to the end of the seam, although afterwards she had to rip out every stitch, for not one of them had caught through. At the end of the hem, she looked up, fastened her needle in the material, and said:
"Then there is no real alternative."
At the decision of Anne's tone, Roger started.
"What do you mean?"