“Neil, how silly to say such a thing, when by its very nature love is somehow involved. In the very essence of it—your winnowing of the physical from the spiritual—it is the ruin of all idealism. Someone we know, who was it, was saying the other day that the trouble with the younger generation is that it lacks guts. You are exactly what he meant, Neil.”
“Don’t be vulgar about it, Sydney. Vulgarity doesn’t suit you. Only the sophisticated can get away with it. Your delicacy is one of the reasons I care for you. And I do care. You can’t say I don’t love you, or you me. Can you say it?”
“Which only makes it frightfully much worse. And don’t lie to me. She couldn’t have written you a letter like that if you hadn’t used love, in one form or another, toward her. Don’t quibble about the meaning of the word love.”
“What do you mean ‘such a letter’?”
“I saw a letter on your desk, Neil. I had to read it, you can see that.”
“Then you got just what was coming to you, Sydney. Even a wife, a wife least of all, doesn’t read a man’s private correspondence unless she wants to get hurt.”
“All right! Say it if you will. It can’t make matters any more terrible than they are. I saw the address on the envelope (I knew she had been in Hollywood this spring), and in a flash I remembered that—that night. It’s asking too much of human nature to ask it to turn its back on the truth at such a moment. And you can’t say it isn’t better to know the truth at whatever cost to us both.”
“If you think so, yes.” Crawford’s anger died as he saw her face change. “Oh, Sydney, don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He tried to take her hands and failed. “And now this other thing to hurt you. I can’t endure it.”
“This other is bad, yes. But not really bad, my dear, as compared to my trust and respect, trust in you and self-respect, splintered to atoms overnight. Bertrand Whittaker can do his worst, can put you behind bars, and me talking to you through bars, but it won’t be a patch on the edge taken off what we have been years in building. Marriages aren’t built in a day. There must be something wrong with me and my dreams, I suppose. Before we left home tonight I happened to pick up a picture of Bunny, and realized it was the one that had been in the town house all winter, watching you—watching you—,” she trailed off helplessly. “I seem so to confuse illusions and realities.”
“Don’t confuse them. Don’t have illusions. Yet that’s why I love you, for the image you make of a perfect life. But it can’t be lived, Sydney. It can’t.”