"Do? Be myself, I suppose! I can't be, here. I'm a sort of all-round fake. I—"
"We none of us want you to be that—Jim least of all. He wants you to feel perfectly free to express your personality."
"Here—in this house?" Her contemptuous gesture seemed to tumble it down like a pack of cards. "And looking at him across the dinner-table every night of my life?"
Pauline paused; then she said gently: "And can you face giving up your baby?"
"Baby? Why should I? You don't suppose I'd ever give up my baby?"
"Then you mean to ask Jim to give up his wife and child, and to assume all the blame as well?"
"Oh, dear, no. Where's the blame? I don't see any! All I want is a new deal," repeated Lita doggedly.
"My dear, I'm sure you don't know what you're saying. Your husband has the misfortune to be passionately in love with you. The divorce you talk of so lightly would nearly kill him. Even if he doesn't interest you any longer, he did once. Oughtn't you to take that into account?"
Lita seemed to ponder. Then she said: "But oughtn't he to take into account that he doesn't interest me any longer?"
Pauline made a final effort at self-control. "Yes, dear; if it's really so. But if he goes away for a time... You know he's to have a long holiday soon, and my husband has arranged to have him go down with Mr. Wyant to the island. All I ask is that you shouldn't decide anything till he comes back. See how you feel about him when he's been away for two or three weeks. Perhaps you've been too much together—perhaps New York has got too much on both your nerves. At any rate, do let him go off on his holiday without the heartbreak of feeling it's good-bye... My husband begs you to do this. You know he loves Jim as if he were his son—"