“Now look here,” she said, “don’t you breathe a word against my husband or we shall quarrel. A nicer, dearer fellow never lived.”
“Then what did you divorce him for?” I asked. It was impertinent, it was unjustifiable. My excuse is that the mystery surrounding the American husband had been worrying me for months. Here had I stumbled upon the opportunity of solving it. Instinctively I clung to my advantage.
“There hasn’t been any divorce,” she said. “There isn’t going to be any divorce. You’ll make me cross in another minute.”
But I was becoming reckless. “He is not dead. You are not divorced from him. Where is he?” I demanded with some heat.
“Where is he?” she replied, astonished. “Where should he be? At home, of course.”
I looked around the luxuriously-furnished room with its air of cosy comfort, of substantial restfulness.
“What home?” I asked.
“What home! Why, our home, in Detroit.”
“What is he doing there?” I had become so much in earnest that my voice had assumed unconsciously an authoritative tone. Presumably, it hypnotised her, for she answered my questions as though she had been in the witness-box.
“How do I know? How can I possibly tell you what he is doing? What do people usually do at home?”