No! There was only one path to her freedom, to their happiness--the path of scandal. Dared he demand that sacrifice from her?
After all, why not? The scandal would be short-lived--the happiness enduring. She was Brunton's merely in name. She had no children. Legally, they might have to put themselves in the wrong; but morally they would be justified. Between them and happiness stood only the shibboleths.
Nevertheless, the shibboleths mattered. Shibboleths were the basis of all society.
Certain people, too--people like his mother,--hated divorce, believed it wicked. His mother still clung to the old faith. His mother would say: "God joined Aliette and Hector in holy matrimony. You have no right to sunder God's joining."
As though humanity were any deity's stud-farm!
CHAPTER IX
1
By that strange perversity which is peculiar to loving womanhood, Aliette's first thoughts--as the taxi rattled her away from Jermyn Street--were for her husband.
For the second time in three years her mood relented. "Poor Hector!" she thought. "He'll be home when I get back. It isn't much of a home for him--ours."
Yet, even relenting, she knew that she could never forgive. The physical Hector was dead, killed by her knowledge of his infidelities--as dead to her as the physical Ronnie was alive.