“Perhaps he thinks that divorce is wrong.”
“He didn’t say so. Of course, it might be that. But he only said that she was his wife, and belonged to him, and that he didn’t mean to give her up.”
Bill drew very hard at his pipe. “Which is true enough,” he added thoughtfully.
“I don’t think I altogether see—exactly—why you ever felt so sure that he would let her have a divorce.”
“Don’t you? Well, it seemed to me that, as he doesn’t care for her nor she for him, and as there are no children to complicate things, it would have been fairly obvious to let her have her freedom and give them both the chance of beginning again. But he’s—he’s hanging on to a formula, so to speak, the formula that she belongs to him—and so he won’t let her go.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Captain Patch.
Nancy Fazackerly felt very unhappy, and her face generally shows what she is feeling.
“It’s very good of you to care,” said Bill Patch affectionately. “But I wish it didn’t make you unhappy. In spite of everything, I’m so awfully, awfully happy myself.”
The boyish slang expression, Nancy said, somehow touched her almost more than anything.