“And you want to be free and living abroad.”
“I wonder how much I’d really mind the scandal,” pursued she. “I don’t care especially about these New York people. And at the worst what harm could they do me?”
“None,” said I.
“They could only talk. How they’d blame me!”
“Behind your back, perhaps,” said I. “Unless they thought I was to blame—which is more likely.”
“You talk of divorce as if it were nothing.”
“It’s merely a means to an end,” said I. “You’ve got only the one life, you know.”
“And I’m no longer so dreadfully young. Though, I heard that Armitage said the other day he would never dream I was over twenty-eight if he didn’t know.”
She laughed with the pleasure we all take in a compliment that is genuine; for she knew as well as did Armitage that she could pass for twenty-eight—and a radiant twenty-eight—even in her least lovely hour.
“No one has youth to waste,” observed I. “In your heart you wish to be free—don’t you?”