Gaston kept echoing. “In self-preservation?”
“To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That’s a much more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They’re doing their best to kill you morally—to render you incapable of individual life.”
Gaston was immensely struck. “They are—they are!” he declared with enthusiasm.
“Well then, if you believe it, for heaven’s sake go and marry her to-morrow!” Waterlow threw down his implements and added: “And come out of this—into the air.”
Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. “And if she goes again and does the very same?”
“The very same—?” Waterlow thought.
“I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear.”
“Well,” said Waterlow, “you’ll at least have got rid of your family.”
“Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they’re not there! They’re right, pourtant, they’re right,” Gaston went on, passing out of the studio with his friend.
“They’re right?”