"And you can tell me of it," he blustered.
"You asked me."
"You believe she did?"
"It's true," said Jeff, with the utmost quietness. "I never have said it before. Not to my father even. But he knows. He did naturally, in the flurry of that time."
"Yet you tell me because I ask you."
Alston seemed to be bitterly defending Esther.
"Not precisely," said Jeff. "Because you're bewitched by her. You must get over that."
The distance wavered before Choate's eyes, He hated Jeffrey childishly because he could be so calm.
"You needn't worry," he said. "She is as completely separated from me as if—as if you had never been away from her."
"That's it," said Jeff. "You can't marry her unless she's divorced from me. She's welcome to that—the divorce, I mean. But you can't go drivelling on having frenzies over her. Good God, Choate, don't you see what you're doing? You're wasting yourself. Shake it off. You don't want Esther. She's shocked you out of your boots already. And she doesn't know there's anything to be shocked at. You're Addington to the bone, and Esther's a primitive squaw. You've nothing whatever to do with one another, you two. It's absurd."