"You ought to have seen it coming. A man of your experience and record isn't like a college freshman in such matters."
"If I had seen it coming, John, believe me I'd have run from it. But all at once it had come, and it's a question now, not of what might have been, but of Lucy's happiness."
"Yes," he said, "we mustn't think of ourselves now, or of the children. We must think of what is best for Lucy. And what is best for Lucy can't be thought out offhand. There's the complication of winding up here, moving, and so forth. What is your idea? Yours and Lucy's?"
"We hope and trust that you won't want to stand in our way."
"Divorce? Well, of course, it might come to that. It's not, however, an idea which I am prepared offhand to receive with enthusiasm. Any more than I propose to act upon the very first impulse which I had when you told me."
"What was that?"
"I thought how delicious it would be to get my automatic and fill you full of lead. But you and Lucy, I take it, have so far resisted your temptations, and I must battle with mine."
"I ought to have said that; our temptations have been resisted, John."
He shrugged that vital fact aside with, "Oh, I should have known if there had been anything to know."
"I needn't say, need I, that I feel like hell about your position, your end of it?"