At this, as we came out of the Library, he made an astonishing rejoinder, and one which I cannot in the least account for: “South Carolina does not allow divorce.”
“Then I should think,” I said to him, “that all you people here would be doubly careful as to what manner of husbands and wives you chose for yourselves.”
Such a remark was sailing, you may say, almost within three points of the wind; and his own accidental allusion to Romeo had brought it about with an aptness and a celerity which were better for my purpose than anything I had privately developed from the text of Bottom and Titania; none the less, however, did I intend to press into my service that fond couple also as basis for a moral, in spite of the sharp turn which those last words of mine now caused him at once to give to our conversation. His quick reversion to the beginning of the talk seemed like a dodging of remarks that hit too near home for him to relish hearing pursued.
“Well, sir,” he resumed with the same initial briskness, “I was ashamed if you were not.”
“I still don’t make out what impropriety we have jointly committed.”
“What do you think of the views you expressed about our country?”
“Oh! When we sat on the gravestones.”
“What do you think about it to-day?”
I turned to him as we slowly walked toward Worship Street. “Did you say anything then that you would take back now?”
He pondered, wrinkling his forehead. “Well, but all the same, didn’t we give the present hour a pretty black eye?”