"I don't want you to find out from him."
"I'll find out."
Raymond fingered his envelope fussily: there was nothing left in it.
"It's all costing me too much. Extras at that school. That big house—too big, too expensive. I can't lug it along any farther. Find me some one to buy it."
"I'll see," I said.
I told him about our visit to the club, two or three months before. I implied, in as delicate and circumambulatory a way as possible, that his one-time wife, according to my own observations, taken under peculiarly favorable, because exacting, conditions, was completely accepted.
"Oh yes," he replied, as if the matter had been settled years ago, and as if he had long had that sense of it. Yes, he seemed to be saying, the marriage had made it all right for her, and had soon begun to make it better for him. Possibly not a "deceived" husband; and no longer so rawly flagrant a failure as a human companion.
"Their house is good, I gather," he went on. "There were some plates of it in the architectural journals. Just how good he doesn't know, I suppose—and never will."
"I found him fairly appreciative of it."
"Possibly—as a financial achievement brought about by his own money."