"It'll be three years next October."
"Why don't you get rid of that woman?" said Mr. Ransome. It was as if with effort and with pain and out of the secret, ultimate sources of his being that he drew the energy to say it. They would never know what he was thinking, never know (as Ranny had once said) what was going on inside him. And of all impossible things, this was what he had come out with now!
"Do you mean that, Father?"
"Of course I mean it."
"Well, then—as it happens—it's what I'm going to do."
"You should have done it before."
"I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"I hadn't the money."
Mr. Ransome closed his eyes again as if in pain.