"Yes. We can. I can. But I wanted to see you,—before I did. Somehow I don't feel lonely with you. I had to see you.... It's good to see you."
She looked me in the face. Her tired eyes lit with a gleam of her former humor.
"Have you thought," she asked, "of all that will happen if there is a divorce?"
"I mean to fight every bit of it."
"They'll beat you."
"We'll see that."
"But they will. And then?"
"Why should one meet disaster half way?"
"Stephen!" she said; "what will happen to you when I am not here to make you look at things? Because I shan't be here. Not within reach of you.... There are times when I feel like a mother to you. Never more than now...."
And then with rapid touches she began to picture the disaster before me. She pictured the Court and our ineffectual denials, she made me realize the storm of hostility that was bound to burst over us. "And think of me," she said. "Stripped I shall be and outcast."