“Well, can we?”
“Can you stay in this house? I mean—if I go away?”
“I don’t know.... I don’t think I could.”
“Then—what do you want?”
Slowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word “divorce” was before us.
“If we can’t live together we ought to be free,” said Marion.
“I don’t know anything of divorce,” I said—“if you mean that. I don’t know how it is done. I shall have to ask somebody—or look it up.... Perhaps, after all, it is the thing to do. We may as well face it.”
We began to talk ourselves into a realisation of what our divergent futures might be. I came back on the evening of that day with my questions answered by a solicitor.
“We can’t as a matter of fact,” I said, “get divorced as things are. Apparently, so far as the law goes you’ve got to stand this sort of thing. It’s silly but that is the law. However, it’s easy to arrange a divorce. In addition to adultery there must be desertion or cruelty. To establish cruelty I should have to strike you, or something of that sort, before witnesses. That’s impossible—but it’s simple to desert you legally. I have to go away from you; that’s all. I can go on sending you money—and you bring a suit, what is it?—for Restitution of Conjugal Rights. The Court orders me to return. I disobey. Then you can go on to divorce me. You get a Decree Nisi, and once more the Court tries to make me come back. If we don’t make it up within six months and if you don’t behave scandalously the Decree is made absolute. That’s the end of the fuss. That’s how one gets unmarried. It’s easier, you see, to marry than unmarry.”
“And then—how do I live? What becomes of me?”