"No, it is not."
(She turned to him from her trouble with visible relief.)
"It's about my wife."
"Vi'let?"
"She's left me."
"Left you? What d'you mean, Ranny?"
"She's gone off—Bolted."
"When?"
"Last night, I suppose—to Paris."
She stared at him strangely, without sympathy, without comprehension. It was almost as if in her mind she accused him of harboring some monstrous hallucination. With her eternal instinct for suppression she fought against it, she refused to take it in. He felt himself unequal to pressing it on her more than that.