“Yes,” I reflected. “I want her—right enough.”
“And me? Where do I come in?”
“I suppose you come in here.”
“Well, but what are you going to do?”
“Do!” I said with the exasperation of the situation growing upon me. “What do you want me to do?”
As I look back upon all that time—across a gulf of fifteen active years—I find I see it with an understanding judgment. I see it as if it were the business of some one else—indeed of two other people—intimately known yet judged without passion. I see now that this shock, this sudden immense disillusionment, did in real fact bring out a mind and soul in Marion; that for the first time she emerged from habits, timidities, imitations, phrases and a certain narrow will-impulse, and became a personality.
Her ruling motive at first was, I think, an indignant and outraged pride. This situation must end. She asked me categorically to give up Effie, and I, full of fresh and glowing memories, absolutely refused.
“It’s too late, Marion,” I said. “It can’t be done like that.”
“Then we can’t very well go on living together,” she said. “Can we?”
“Very well,” I deliberated “if you must have it so.”