‘I am going to do nothing.’
‘But surely you’re not in low spirits?’
‘What have I to rejoice about?’
They talked for a while before Amy brought herself to utter what she was thinking.
‘Isn’t it a most ridiculous thing that married people who both wish to separate can’t do so and be quite free again?’
‘I suppose it would lead to all sorts of troubles—don’t you think?’
‘So people say about every new step in civilisation. What would have been thought twenty years ago of a proposal to make all married women independent of their husbands in money matters? All sorts of absurd dangers were foreseen, no doubt. And it’s the same now about divorce. In America people can get divorced if they don’t suit each other—at all events in some of the States—and does any harm come of it? Just the opposite I should think.’
Edith mused. Such speculations were daring, but she had grown accustomed to think of Amy as an ‘advanced’ woman, and liked to imitate her in this respect.
‘It does seem reasonable,’ she murmured.
‘The law ought to encourage such separations, instead of forbidding them,’ Amy pursued. ‘If a husband and wife find that they have made a mistake, what useless cruelty it is to condemn them to suffer the consequences for the whole of their lives!’