'How much or how little do you mean?'
'Separated on account of irreconcilable incompatibility.'
'Impossible!'
'Possible, because true.'
'Why did you not tell before Mr. Audley was gone?'
'It would have been bad taste to obtrude one's own little affairs, and leave him with vexatious intelligence to ruminate on his voyage. Nay, who knows but that he might have thought it his duty to wait to compose matters, and so a bright light might have been lost to the Antipodes.'
'You actually mean me to understand that you have broken with Tom Underwood!'
'The etchings were the text of an awful row, in which the old gentleman exposed himself more than I am willing to repeat, and called on me to choose between his hides and tallow and what he was pleased to call my tomfoolery.'
Felix groaned.
'Exactly so. You are conscious that his demand was not only tyrannical but impracticable. One can't change the conditions of one's nature.'