“He takes her for a walk every day and sees her home whenever they’re at the same parties, but I can’t personally see why he shouldn’t do that,” Sallie declared. “All this gossip and tittle-tattle makes me sick. Whatever they do it’s their own business and nobody else’s.”
Again I mentioned Mr. Harter’s name, and it met with as little acclamation as before.
“He’d better come to England if he doesn’t like his wife to have friendships.”
“Do you suppose she writes and tells him about them?” asked Sallie ironically.
“One has links, as Lady Annabel would say. He’s probably heard all about it, and rather more than all, from some officious soul who thinks he ought to know. After all, Mrs. Harter was Diamond Ellison, the plumber’s daughter, and pretty well-known, at least by name, to everybody here, let alone that she’s the sort that always does get talked about.”
“She interests me a good deal, as a psychological study,” said Sallie. “But as a matter of fact, I don’t consider that she’s behaving well.”
“You mean that what she’s doing—getting herself talked about with Patch, while her husband is abroad—is anti-social?” Martyn suggested.
“Yes, exactly. I’ve no feelings, personally, as to the rights or wrongs of anything, from an ethical point of view, but I do bar the sort of thing that can only be called anti-social.”
They are both perfectly satisfied once they have found a label, and affixed it, to any situation.
I should like to see Martyn or Sallie—but especially Sallie—in love. There are times when I believe that she is quite incapable of it. She would pin down and analyze every symptom of her condition and then discuss it exhaustively, and very likely write a book about it. Perhaps passion could survive all this. I am not prepared to say that it could not, for I am conscious that the understanding of one generation cannot project itself into that of another, whatever Claire may say about the experience of a lifetime, which in reality has nothing whatever to do with it.