“You had better let me finish what I have got to say. I will be as brief as I can. That is my case as regards Bill. Now about myself. What do you think I am made of? I’ve stood it just as long as I could; you have tried me too hard. I’m through. Heaven knows why it should have come to this. It is not so very long ago that Bill was half the world to you and I was the other half. Now, apparently, there is not room in your world for either of us.”
Ruth had risen. She was trembling.
“I think we had better end this.”
He broke in on her words.
“End it? Yes, you’re right. One way or the other. Either go back to the old life or start a new one. What we are living now is a horrible burlesque.”
“What do you mean? How start a new life?”
“I mean exactly what I say. In the life you are living now I am an anachronism. I’m a survival. I’m out of date and in the way. You would be freer without me.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Is the idea so novel? Is our marriage the only failure in New York?”
“Do you mean that we ought to separate?”