“No, Anson, not for a moment. What I ask is a simple thing. It has been done before.”
He did not answer her at once, and began to move about the room in the deepest agitation, a strange figure curiously out of place in the midst of Horace Pentland’s exotic, beautiful pictures and chairs and bibelots—as wrong in such a setting as he had been right a month or two earlier among the museum of Pentland family relics.
“No,” he said again and again. “What you ask is preposterous! To-morrow when you are less tired you will see how ridiculous it is. No ... I couldn’t think of such a thing!”
She made an effort to speak quietly. “Is it because you don’t want to put yourself in such a position?”
“It has nothing to do with that. Why should you want a divorce? We are well off, content, comfortable, happy....”
She interrupted him, asking, “Are we?”
“What is it you expect, Olivia ... to live always in a sort of romantic glow? We’re happier than most.”
“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think happiness has ever meant much to you, Anson. Perhaps you’re above such things as happiness and unhappiness. Perhaps you’re more fortunate than most of us. I doubt if you have ever known happiness or unhappiness, for that matter. You’ve been uncomfortable when people annoyed you and got in your way, but ... that’s all. Nothing more than that. Happiness ... I mean it in the sensible way ... has sometimes to do with delight in living, and I don’t think you’ve ever known that, even for a moment.”
He turned toward her saying, “I’ve been an honest, God-fearing, conscientious man, and I think you’re talking nonsense!”
“No, not for a moment.... Heaven knows I ought to know the truth of what I’ve been saying.”