“As soon as I can,” replied she. With a friendly but not tender smile: “As soon as you’ll let me.”
The absence of her customary effusiveness confirmed my theory of her coming. I had thought all out with the utmost care. I felt it would be in every way unwise to let her see that I was eager for the divorce. She must open the subject. It had ever been my rule, when I wanted anything, so to maneuver that the other person should propose the exchange. It is the rule of successful operation in every department of life. Therefore, adhering strictly to my prearranged programme, I could only sit tight and wait.
How she tried my patience! I was mad to have the preliminaries over, to have the divorce under way—mad, not with the hysterical impatience of those short-sighted people who mess their purposes through lack of self-restraint, but with the white-hot repressed patience of those who have their way in this world. Day followed day, and she did not speak. I gave up the evenings and a large part of the afternoons to her. I stayed on after dinner until there was no further excuse for lingering. I listened to her interminable recital of fashionable names, dates, gossip, adventure. A week of this, and just as my fortitude was wearing itself out and I had begun to debate opening the subject myself, she said:
“I’ve been down looking at our house. Really it’s not half bad. Why shouldn’t we open it?”
I did not know what to say. Was I mistaken in her purpose in coming? Or was this proposal to open the house the clever move of a clever gamester to force me to speak first?
“This lovely weather!” she went on. “It’s a shame such a climate should be wasted upon such a vulgar city. When I think of the dreadful rains that infest Paris and the rains and fogs of London— How they would glory in this sun and sparkling air.”
To my notion New York was vastly more attractive than dreary London or rainy, sloppy Paris. But I made no defense of New York. I wished her to think it crude and tiresome.
“And the fashionable society here,” she went on. “What a silly copy of the real thing over there!”
“It must remind you of Passaic,” said I.
She visibly shivered.