“Good advice, but it doesn’t fit the case.”
“Oh, you don’t wish to marry him?”
“I never thought of it. But I’d rather not discuss the sentiment-side, please. Just the practical side.”
“But there isn’t any practical side. Why doesn’t he get a divorce?”
“Because he’s too conspicuous. There’d be an outcry against him. I don’t believe he could get the divorce.”
Emily was gazing miserably into the fire. Joan looked at her pityingly. “Oh,” she said gently, dropping the tone of banter. “Yes—that might be.”
“And it seems to me that I can’t give him up.”
“But why do you debate it? Why not follow where your instinct leads?”
“That’s just it—where does my instinct lead? If—the—the circumstances—I can’t explain them to you—were different with him about—about his family, I’d probably reason that I was not robbing any one and would try to—to be happy. But——”
She halted altogether and, when she continued, her voice was low and she was looking at her friend, pleadingly yet proudly: “You may be right. We may be deceiving ourselves. But I do not think so, Joan. I believe—and you do too, don’t you?—that there can be high thoughts in common between a man and a woman. I’m sure they can care in such a way that passion becomes like the fire, fusing two metals into one stronger and better than either by itself. And I think—I feel—yes, it seems to me I know, that it is so with us. Oh, Joan, he and I need each the other.”