He could only say: “This woman is my wife. I forbid her to explore any region of life which I cannot enter. She has no entity apart from me; her personality can find no food except what I am able or choose to provide for her.”
That was impossible, for it was not true.
More humanly he might say:
“I can understand that you love each other. But I cannot condone the selfishness it has led you to, or the secrecy. . . .”
There he stopped. There was no secrecy. They were disguising nothing. They did not tell him because their intimacy was, as yet, so preciously private an affair that it could not bear talking of; and he bowed to that and respected their reticence.
Matilda went to tidy her hair and he was left alone with Panoukian. They could find nothing to say to each other. The minds of both were full of the woman. Without her they fell apart, each into his separate world. And Old Mole knew that the issue of the adventure lay with her, and he knew that Panoukian looked for no issue and was living blindly in the present. He felt sorry for Panoukian.
The evening papers were thrust through the door. Panoukian fetched them and gave them to his host. The largest event of the day was the grave illness of Sir Robert Wherry.
“Dear, dear,” said Old Mole.
“I shouldn’t have thought he was human enough to be ill,” said Panoukian.
“It is ptomaine poisoning, set up by a surfeit of oysters.”