"It's no good. You're not free. You married Vi, dear, and whatever she's done you can't un-marry her."
"Can't I? That's precisely what I can do; and it's what I'm going to do."
"You're not. You couldn't."
It seemed to him that she shrank from him in horror.
"You don't understand. You're talking as if she and I cared for each other. That's at an end. It's done for. She's asked me to divorce her."
"Asked you? When?"
"More than two years ago, and I promised. She wants to marry Mercier, and she'd better. I'd have been free two years ago if I'd had the money. But I've got it now. I've been saving for it. I've been doing nothing else, thinking of nothing else from morning till night for more than two years, because I meant to ask you to marry me."
"All that time?"
"All that time."
"But Ranny, you know you needn't. I'm quite happy."