“No—I don’t believe that either.” But for all her stout words, Margaret sounded a little more dubious this time. “Let’s leave her out of it. What is there to do about you and Gage?”
“I despise my own incompetence of decision,” said Helen. “But I don’t know. I don’t know how to go through the business. It seems impossible that we’ve come to the edge of divorce but I can’t go on living with a man who acts as Gage does. I can’t, that is, with any measure of self-respect. And yet I look around and the very weight of detail—the tremendous business of unwinding a marriage—it seems then as if the quick flare-up of partings that you read about—the separations that never involve themselves with the machinery of complaints and retaining lawyers and distributing property and—moving vans—are quite fantastic. I wonder if it’s laziness which keeps me so fearful of the mass of detail, Margaret—”
“Of course you’re trivial on purpose, I suppose,” answered Margaret. “The things you speak of don’t really bother you.”
“Yes. Translated into more serious terms I suppose the thing that hurts is the terrible pain of cleavage between two people who have grown into each other for years.”
“More likely. Helen, I don’t want to probe, but do you want to live without Gage?”
Helen pondered.
“I don’t want to lose him. I feel dreadfully cheated—put upon. I didn’t want any of this. If I’d known that he was going to feel so outraged at the political venture I’d have stopped, I think, before I let it get to an impasse. But I’m afraid it’s that now. He and I were—well, there’s no use debauching myself with memories. No—I don’t think I want to lose him but even aside from this question of his disloyalty—this business with Freda Thorstad—he’s becoming impossible to live with. The children are noticing it. He doesn’t play with them as he used to. Goes off by himself. There’s no free and easy interchange between us at all. Of course he’s often flatly rude to me before the servants.”
“Suppose you gave up all the things he doesn’t like now, would that solve things?”
Helen shook her head.
“Not now. The thing has gone too far. We’ve been ugly to each other and we wouldn’t forget that. Besides I’m afraid I’d be resentful. There’s no reason why I should be completely subject to Gage’s slightest word. We can’t build on that basis.”