"I think Lucy won't be willing to wait a year."
"She must be made willing. You must help. A year soon passes—soon passes. If things then are as they are now, then I shall believe that your love for each other is strong and fine, and I shall renounce my claim with a good grace—a good grace."
"If we can't wait a year, John!"
"You mean if you won't? In that case I shall not feel that Lucy is entitled to a divorce, or either of you to any money at my hands. Among the people who are necessary to you and Lucy, a wronged and upright husband has great power. If you are such children, such fools, as not to be willing to stand a test of your love, you will have to be punished. It would mean that your passion has nothing to do with what is understood by love. You would merely be pointed at and passed up as a rather well-known young couple with adulterous proclivities."
There was a long, charged silence.
"The law and the prophets are all on your side, John, but——"
"You'll not answer now, please. You'll think it over. And don't forget all the pleasant things that you can do in a year. There's that hunting trip in Somaliland you used to talk about so much—there's London and Paris—wonderful places for a man who's trying to cure himself of an unlawful love."
"Trying to cure himself?"
"Of course. Jesting aside, don't you think that what you and Lucy want to do to Jock and Hurry and me is wrong? Of course you do. You're not a devil. If, by uttering the wish, you could bring it about that you had never loved Lucy, that she had never fallen out of love with me and loved you over the heads of her children, that all might be as it was when you first began to come to our house, wouldn't you utter that wish? Of course you would."
He was smiling at me now, very gently and cunningly, and there was, at the same time, in his eyes an awful pathos.