"Well!"
"You know what I shall feel. I told you last night."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, after a pause.
"Nothing."
"I am to hear these stories and not even to tell you that I have heard them?"
"I did not say that, George. I suppose it is better that you should tell me. But I think you should say at the same time that you know them to be false." Even though they were false, there was that doctrine of Cæsar's wife which she would not understand! "I think I should be told, and then left to regulate my own ways accordingly." This was mutinously imperious, and yet he did not quite know how to convince her of her mutiny. Through it all he was cowed by the remembrance of that love-letter, which, of course, was in her mind, but which she was either too generous or too wise to mention. He almost began to think that it was wisdom rather than generosity, feeling himself to be more cowed by her reticence than he would have been by her speech.
"You imagine, then, that a husband should never interfere."
"Not to protect a wife from that from which she is bound to protect herself. If he has to do so, she is not the worth the trouble, and he had better get rid of her. It is like preventing a man from drinking by locking up the wine."
"That has to be done sometimes."
"It sha'n't be done to me, George. You must either trust me, or we must part."