Not to offer to marry her hadn’t even occurred to Jerome—not so much because he was any sort of a moral giant as because it had become so natural a thing to want to marry Lili that impetus carried him along over the rough road of their new relationship. The facts in the case merely made simple and inevitable what he had all along desired. However, here was a new and startling complication. His mind was in a curiously mixed condition, and he asked himself in bewilderment what steps remained to be taken. He would willingly help some other way, if he could only decide what would help. They sat together over the empty rum glasses. The world had been so fair; now it seemed a very shabby and sordid place.
Lili dropped her head down onto her arms, folded before her on the table. Her shoulders trembled a little, and he knew she was crying again.
Jerome’s heart was deeply touched. Surely, he thought, there must be some way for him to put out his hand and help. He had forgotten all her lightness, all the torments he had endured for the sake of love. In the confusion of his heart there was something almost like exaltation. He spoke to her gently.
When she raised her head and took up the sorry theme again, it was at exactly the point where it had lapsed so miserably. “Divorce wouldn’t do any good, anyhow, about what I’ve got into now.”
“No,” he agreed thoughtfully, “I guess it wouldn’t.” He felt desperately remorseful.
But that vaguely cunning look in her eyes remained, behind the tears and behind the hopelessness of her position. After a moment, squeezing his hand a little, she murmured: “Jerry, there’s just one way out, if—if you’d be willing to do it—for my sake.”
He brightened. “What is it?”
“Well,” she hesitated, “nobody knows I’m married but you—nobody in this part of the world, anyhow, and I....” It was a little more difficult than she had realized, for she knew that Jerome sometimes had queer ideas about convention.
“Go on and tell me, Lili,” he encouraged.
“Well, then,” she continued, “what I thought of was why couldn’t we just tell them we’d run off all of a sudden and got married?”