"You don't mean it's incurable? Have you had in the physician?"
"Oh, it's not physical," she replied petulantly. "It's mental. It's the conditions. I'm sick of everything. You don't care in the least for me any more. You haven't since mama came back. You had an assignation with her in the gardens of the hotel at Funchal the very next morning, and you kissed her there under my window. I saw you."
The thing took him so by surprise that he couldn't muster a single word for defense.
"I do wish you'd leave me," she went on. "Why don't you ask mama to bolt with you? I'm sure she would, and then I'd be rid of you both."
He nearly reeled under the shock of that speech. It held him still mute. It was painfully plain that something was wrong in a social fabric which made it possible for a wife to say such a thing—a young and pretty wife, too. And to say it without seeming to find it very heinous.
He noticed that she yawned and went on reading her book.
When he fully sensed it all, hours later, alone on the promenade, he decided to go off. But not with "mama."