"Jim, what in thunder ails you to let a woman play the devil with you?"
"You ask that, Andy?"
"Yes. Our cases are quite different, Helen's dead, but Katherine knows damned well what she is doing."
"She doesn't, Andy. In one way she's as dead as Helen, she hasn't waked up."
"And you think she will? You think the time will come when she can see your genius and get her little carcass out of the way?"
"Hold up, Andy! I came to have you criticise my picture, not my wife."
But Law did not pay any attention.
"She ought to leave you alone, if she cannot understand. No human being has a right to twist another one out of shape."
Norval retreated; but he was too distraught to refuse any haven for his perplexity.
"After all," he said, "there's no more reason for my having my life than for Katherine having hers. She wanted a husband and we were married. If I had known that I couldn't be—a husband, I might have saved the day, but I didn't, Law, I didn't. Getting married seemed part of the game, nearly everyone does get married. And then, well, the trouble began. There are certain obligations that go with being a husband. Katherine has never exacted more than her due only——"